


String Theory

by pprfaith



Series: Naughty Hookers (Swathed in Wool) [6]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Adoption, Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe, Alternative POVs, Asexual Character, Asexuality, Crochet, Cult of Awesome, F/F, F/M, Father-Son Relationship, Fluff and Humor, Found Family, Friendship, Grieving, Happy Funtimes Sunshine, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Knitting, M/M, Mentionen Child Neglect, Moving On, Past Character Death, Past Child Abuse, Past Childhood Trauma, Past Death of a Spouse, Quarter-Life Crisis, Sarcasm, Sass and Snark, Self-Esteem Issues, Sequel, Tattoos, The Sheriff wasn't the best dad, These Tags Read like a Carebear Buzzword List, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, child-rearing, crafting, multiple POVs, parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-01-15 17:08:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 53,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12325275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: Alternately Titled: A Guide to Life, Crafting and Adulting, by Craft Fiend & Co.It's been two years, Stiles has accepted that he needs a bigger store, Allison needs a career, Jennifer needs new friends, Peter needs some sanity and obviously all of them need more knitwear. Because Duh.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've had the first few chapters and a vague outline of this lying around for months but neither the time nor the right mindset to go anywhere with it. Today, I decided screw it. Hook, Yarn, Sinker wouldn't have been nearly as much fun as it was if I had a plan.
> 
> So we're flying by the seats of our pants again, my dears, and I hope you're along for the ride again, because it wouldn't be any kind of fun without you. 
> 
> Ideas, inspiration and any kinds of conversation are appreciated and welcome, as ever. Talk to me! Better yet, talk craft to me!

+  
The eyes, Stiles decides. 

If he’s really going to commit ritual suicide with the knitting needles in his hands, he’s probably best served going for the eyes. The jugular would just be a mess and he doesn’t know enough about anatomy to get any major organs. So. The eyes. 

Straight for the brain and then, hopefully, peace. 

Yes, please.

“Stiles? Stiles? Are you listening to me? Where to you want me to put the raw silk stuff that came in this morning?”

Mason is wearing that look, the one that says he’s asked a couple of times already. For a minimum wage part-time employee, he’s way too snappy. It’s why Stiles adores him. Usually.

“By the paper craft stuff,” he answers, because duh.

Cora, bouncing on his hip, nods wisely. “Paper!” she echoes and holds up the invoices he just caught her shredding in her tiny, destructive hands. 

“When is Uncle Peter getting us?” Derek demands from somewhere.

“Is this organic wool?”

“The register is out of paper, Stiles. Did you order more?”

“That section is taken up by alpaca stuff.”

Definitely the eye. Can’t be more painful than this, because it’s only four pm, there’s hours more to go, the customers keep piling in, the kids are cranky, Peter is stuck in court and Stiles has been trying since eleven am to get himself a damn cup of coffee and still hasn’t managed it. 

He takes a deep breath. 

“Of course the wool is organic. If it came out of a damn machine, it wouldn’t be wool, Ma’am, Peter’s coming when he’s coming, take your sister and keep her busy, the damn paper is where it always is, Liam, open your eyes, and put the damn silk yarn in the back if there’s no place up front!” He might be yelling at the end. 

He might also have chased the organic wool lady off forever, if her venomous glare is anything to go by. Since there are currently about two dozen more customers inside the store, he doesn’t feel all that bad.

Derek takes Cora docilely, Liam looks for his own damn paper and Mason’s expression goes from sassy to sheepish. “Sorry,” he offers. “It’s insane today.”

Yes.

“I need coffee,” Stiles groans. “Give me that.”

He takes the box of yarn from Mason. Any excuse to get away from people for five minutes. The kid passes him his burden happily, turning to sort out a gaggle of teens by the scrapbooking display. 

Mason’s mother is obsessed with scrapbooks. He’s a pro at this. Which is why Stiles upsized the paper crafts section and thus has less space to display the specialty yarns he’s been picking up at various fairs and conventions. Peter got him hooked – pun intended – with their first date. He’s been a bit mad about craft fairs since. Sue him. 

On the way to the backroom, he stumbles over two toddlers that have escaped from the playpen set up by the couches, helps three customers find something and slaps a roll of paper into Liam’s hand, because the kid needs glasses. Or a damn service dog. Something. 

And then, blessed silence. 

Stiles slips into the storage room, slams the door shut behind him and looks for a place to drop of his cargo. 

Only to realize that the only space left in the entire room is the one square foot right by the door, where he’s standing. 

The entire room is filled to the brim with knitting, crochet, scrapbooking, embroidery, weaving and who knows what the fuck else supplies. Every square inch. All of it. 

He opens the door, steps back outside, and kicks the box under the register, where Liam is finally, finally, making inroads on the queue snaking through the aisles. 

A few feet away, Mason is trying to navigate between at least half a dozen customers crowded into far too little space. Derek, being the helpful little miracle he is, has corralled the escaped toddlers and occupied Cora with them. Bless his stoic little heart. 

The kids’ mothers are standing close by, cooing and blocking the exit. 

“I’m going to need a bigger store,” Stiles realizes.

Laura, materializing out of nowhere with the biggest mug Stiles owns, filled to the brim with black, black and hopefully diabetes-inducingly sweet coffee, makes a derisive sound. “Well, duh,” she says, and hands him the mug with a smug little grin. 

He takes it, reels her in for a one-armed hug and them promptly burns his tongue on the first sip.

Laura cackles. 

+

Peter barely manages to escape from the courthouse in time to be late for dinner. Late enough that, when he asks Amy whether she wants to be dropped off by her car or at home, she simply clucks her tongue, makes a whipping motion with one hand and orders, “Home, go horsey!”

He glares at her. 

She beams back at him angelically. 

“I should never have introduced you to my family,” he decides as he pulls into traffic, turning his car toward her condo instead of back to the office. He should go back there and file that appeal, but fuck it. Tomorrow morning is early enough. It’s not like a single night is going to change anything. The judge is probably already in bed, bless his grumpy, geriatric little heart.

“Probably,” Amy agrees, kicking her heels off and wiggling her toes with a borderline pornographic moan. “But you’d miss my gossip reports.”

True. Ever since Amy met the kids, Stiles, and the rest of the gang, she’s been taking perverse pleasure in the rumors going around at work. About how Peter has shipped his niece and nephew off to boarding school, given Cora up for adoption and fucks a different supermodel every week. How he lives in a penthouse and looks down on the world. How his pajamas are designer and he spends his weekends making little children cry for fun. He’s a shark, he’s a monster, he’s rich, beautiful and has a cold heart, he’s a sociopath and secretly an assassin.

(Basically, he’s back to his pre-child-having self.)

Half of the rumors, Amy started herself and they have lunch at least once a week and laugh themselves stupid over all of it. Sometimes Lydia joins them and the redhead in five inch Louboutin’s with a standing invitation to his office is nothing but fuel to the fire. 

It’s amazing. 

“Speaking off,” his paralegal adds, “Erica said she and Boyd are out this Friday, because Alli is still sick. I was thinking,” she stops, chews on her lip a little. But Peter wouldn’t waste time on her if she’d let a little insecurity stop her. “I was thinking my place instead?”

She’s been showing up for most Pizza Nights for the past three months, goes out for drinks with Lydia and Kira sometimes and Peter is pretty sure he saw Stiles sneak her a ‘Cult of Awesome’ shirt at some point. 

Stockholm Syndrome has definitely set in. 

“You sure you want to subject your quiet, peaceful, orderly home to that?” he asks, wryly. 

She sets her jaw. “Yes.”

Turning onto her street, Peter shrugs. “Your funeral,” he decides. “Send out the texts, and the masses will come to destroy your furniture.”

He lets the car coast to a stop in front of her building and she unbuckles her seatbelt, grabs her bag and heels, and climbs out. Before she closes the door, she leans back in to announce, “You can front all you want, bossman, but you know you love it.”

Then she slams the door shut with a bang before Peter can answer, and saunters off with a wave. 

Which is just as well, because the goofy grin on Peter’s face is just embarrassing. 

+

The grin lasts until he steps into his living room and finds that a paper factory exploded in it. 

Stiles, who seems to have been mortally wounded in the explosion, is sprawled on the floor in the middle of the mess, frantically scribbling on what looks like his bank statements of the last five years. As Peter watches, he mutters something under his breath, shoves the pile of paper away and unearths his laptop without looking to frantically begin typing. 

He hits the enter key hard enough to make Peter wince, then hollers, “Laura!” into the void. 

A moment later, Peter’s niece appears behind him, a stack of colored post-it notes in hand. She fires them at Stiles’ head, where it impacts hard and then thumps to the floor.

“Ah, thanks,” the man mutters. 

Peter makes the executive decision to retreat and save as many as he can, which means he grabs Laura by the arm and hauls her into the kitchen. 

“Did he hit his head really hard at work today?” he asks her, dead serious. Stiles has always been eccentric, but this is a new level of obsessive. 

Talia’s Bitch Please expression looks up at him from her daughter’s face. “He’s planning something,” she informs him.

“I never would have guessed from the frantic googling, the papers and the notes,” Peter deadpans. 

“I think he wants to buy a new store.”

“You mean he finally realized that the shoe-box he has no is in no way big enough for the actual size of his business?”

“He had an epi-,” she stops.

“Epiphany?”

“- epiphany in the middle of the store.”

“Good boy.”

She scrunches up her nose. “Eugh, Uncle Peter! I don’t need to hear these things!”

With an eyeroll, Peter ruffles her carefully braided hair until it stands on end and then turns her around and swats her on the bum, “Upstairs. I’ll brave the storm. If you find my body tomorrow morning, don’t let your siblings see.”

She actually laughs at his morbid predictions and Peter gets briefly overwhelmed by parental pride. To combat the squishy feelings, he shoves her toward the stairs. She uses the momentum to race up to the first landing before shouting back down, “We have a new neighbor. I want to bake her a cake!”

“Not tonight, you’re not!”

But she’s already gone, a door slamming in the distance. 

Behind him, Stiles seems to have finally noticed that Peter is home, because he calls his name. Peter loosens his tie, drops his suit jacket over the sofa and then carefully toes his way through the mess to haul his partner to his feet by his hood.

Stiles flails, curses and then finds his footing in time to lean in for a kiss. When he draws back, he takes in Peter, then grins, “Rumpled business man. My favorite.”

And fists Peter’s tie to haul him in for another, filthier kiss. They end up on the couch, Stiles in Peter’s lap, making out lazily for almost five minutes before coming up for air. 

It’s almost enough to make Peter forget about the state of the living room. But then he drops one hand from Stiles’ waist and hits paper instead of cushion. Right.

“You’re finally looking into a bigger store?”

Stiles squints down at him. “Why does everyone already know I need more space and yet no-one has told me?”

It’s probably a rhetorical question, but, “The last time anyone tried to give you advice on the store, you ended up calling me in the middle of the night to play therapist for you.”

A dismissive hand-wave is his only answer. 

“Find anything, yet?”

“Still trying to figure out what I need.”

“Going to give the job to Helen?”

Stiles shakes his head. “Helen does homes, not businesses. But I thought I’d hit her up for referrals. She must know a realtor who does business places, right?”

Peter hums, distracted by nudging a hand under Stiles’ multiple layers to stroke the skin of his side. Ticklish, the other man squirms but doesn’t move away. 

“Are you looking to buy or rent?”

“Depends, doesn’t it? If the place is right, I think I could do either.”

“If the money is a problem – “

“Nope! Don’t start. My business, my money. You already pay for almost everything else, but that’s mine.”

Peter backs off with two hands raised. Stiles still gets weird about _Yarnsome_ at the strangest things, protective over his homage to his mother like a Pitbull over his bone. Which is probably unfair to the Pitbulls. Scott insists they’re brilliant family dogs.

“We’re together,” he mollifies, “I share my kids with you. And my toothbrush. Money wouldn’t be a hardship.”

“That was one time! I dropped my toothbrush in the toilet and there wasn’t time to find another one!”

“And I have forgiven you,” Peter agrees.

“But not forgotten,” Stiles counters.

“Now where would be the fun in that?”

“You’re a vindictive asshole, have I told you that lately?”

“And you’re a little shit. It’s a match made in heaven.”

“You mean hell.”

“Possibly.”

“How was court?”

“We lost. I’m filing an appeal tomorrow.” Peter sighs. His client is a bag of dicks, as Allison put it when he told her about the case over family dinner, and he does not deserve to win custody of his two teenage children. Unfortunately, he’s the brother of a very big, very important client of CC&H, so Peter has to play nice and at least appear to be trying. It’s ruining his stats, but he doesn’t really care. That man should not be near children. 

Actually, he probably shouldn’t be near _people_.

“Bummer. More time with Mr. Nameless Due to Confidentiality of the Sparkling Personality. I hoped you’d get rid of him today.”

“You and me, both. During lunch, he theorized that his wife’s lax parenting turned his son into a fag.”

“No, Peter,” Stiles refuses without hesitation. “You cannot murder him. Absolutely not.”

“I’m a lawyer. I could get away with it. And your dad would help me hide the body back home. No-one would find him on the Preserve.”

He may have spent most of said lunch planning homicide, when he wasn’t busy holding Amy back. Since it kept him from actually lunging across the table and punching his client in his homophobic face, he figures he’s allowed. 

“The risk is too high,” Stiles retorts. “You get caught, I’ll have to raise the Terrible Trio alone and you know I wouldn’t survive that. I’m a delicate flower!”

Peter tries to shape his face into something sardonic, but he’s afraid he ends up looking hopelessly fond because it’s apparently a foregone conclusion that Stiles will raise Peter’s brood on his own if anything should happen to Peter. Which, yes, he’s got a tattoo in their name on his leg, but sometimes, sometimes Peter gets hit hard by how much he loves Stiles and it takes him a while to get over the shock of it. 

Lucky for him, Stiles’ damaged self-esteem leaves him mostly blind to Peter’s moments of idiotic, love-struck adoration, so Peter can gloss over it by hauling him in for another kiss.

When Stiles pulls back this time, he announces, “Oh, by the way, we have a new neighbor. Laura and I are baking her a cake.”

Peter groans. 

+


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The new neighbor and everyone's favorite bestie speak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I added these ladies' PoVs for a bigger range of plot. Please let me know how their voices are working for you?

+

The house is too big and it’s never been more obvious than standing in the half-unpacked kitchen and listening to the echo of her own footsteps.

Most of the furniture is where it belongs, but there are no curtains up, no decorations set out, no pictures hung on the walls. The physical echo is going to disappear with a few days of work. 

It’s the other kind of echo, the other kind of emptiness that’s going to stay. 

The space that Julia used to take up. 

Maybe buying the house was a bad idea. Maybe Jennifer’s parents were right when they told her not to do something so big in her dead wife’s name. That it would only hurt. But Julia always wanted a house like this. Ten years of hard work, that was the plan, and then they’d move to California, where it’s warm year round, and buy a giant house to fill with a family. 

Thanks to the insurance pay-out, it only took Jennifer a bit over a year to buy this place. 

(It feels too cheap and too expensive at the same time.)

Julia will never see it. 

Julia has been dead for fourteen months. 

And their dream turned into a chance for a new start, a way for Jennifer to try and escape the ghosts without leaving the memory. 

Said out loud, none of this makes sense at all. But then, who would she tell any of this too, anyway? There is no-one to listen. 

“You always said I was bad with emotions,” she tells the empty kitchen, raising her coffee in tribute. “And I think it’s gotten worse without you here to translate for me.”

Whatever.

Time to get to work. Living room, kitchen and bedroom have priority. And since the kitchen is right here, well, why not. She’s about to grab the cleaning utensils from where she left them last night, when exhaustion finally broke her down, when the doorbell rings. 

She doesn’t know a single soul in the entire state, so who the hell is at her door at… seven thirty in the morning?

Through the glass in the door, she sees a man in a suit and a little girl with a covered plate in her hands. 

Neighbors. 

Oh god. 

Briefly, Jennifer considers not opening the door. But she does plan to live here for a while, so she should probably not make enemies on her second day and if she sees them, they can see her. Too late to play possum.

She opens the door. 

“Good morning!” The girl chirps, bouncing on her toes. She’s wearing a variety of eye-searing colors, her hair is in a messy braid and her eyes sparkle. Epitome of happy kid. It’s painful to watch this early in the morning. 

Or at any other time, really.

The man (father) is more subdued in a classy suit and dress shoes. His eyes are really blue. 

“Good morning,” he echoes, offering his hand. “I’m Peter Hale, and this flummy is Laura, my niece. I tried to get her to wait until after school, but she’s been burning to get over here since last night, so for sanity’s sake, here we are.”

His self-deprecating grin is charming and his niece’s eye roll is amusing. “I’m not a flummy, Uncle Peter!”

He pats her on the head like a pet. She scowls. 

Belatedly, Jennifer takes his other hand, shakes it. “Jennifer Blake,” she offers. “I guess you noticed that I’m new.”

Laura nods, beaming. “Uh-huh. We saw you moving in yesterday, so Stiles and I made you cupcakes. Cause everyone loves cupcakes and moving is hard!”

That sounds like she’s quoting someone. Somehow, Jennifer manages to drag up a smile for the little girl. 

“Thank you,” she says, “That was nice. I haven’t gotten around to grocery shopping, yet.”

Laura grins some more. Her features are completely different from her uncle, but they smile the same way. Happy kid. Happy family. The sense of envy rising up in her is almost enough to make her choke. 

Julia and she planned this life, the life in a suburb, with kids and a house and cupcakes. Instead some sleazy rich guy living in the mansion next door has it. And there’s probably a pretty wife and a family dog to match. She saw a gorgeous brunette enter the house yesterday afternoon. It’s not fair. 

None of this is fair. 

(“Fair is for losers, Jenny. We make our own luck, you and me.”)

But that little girl isn’t to blame for Jennifer’s hang-ups, so she accepts the plate with another ‘thank you’ and promises to enjoy the cupcakes.

“You can share them,” Laura says, “we made enough.” Then, seeing something Jennifer can’t quite keep off her face, she adds, “Or you can eat them all alone. They’re too good to share anyway, promise!”

Peter, watching them with unreadable eyes, puts a hand on his niece’s shoulder. “Come on, sweetheart. That’s enough terrorizing the neighbors for one morning. We’ve got to get you and your siblings shipped off.”

Laura pouts, but submits to letting herself by turned around and shoved toward the driveway, where a little boy is chasing a toddler around a parked car. Yup. Happy family. 

Peter doesn’t follow immediately, turns back to her. “Again, my apologies for her. She gets overeager. But if you need any help, don’t be shy to come over. There’s almost always someone home.”

That, too, sounds like he’s quoting something. Delivering orders from that Stepford wife, maybe. Be nice to the lonely, weird woman moving into that giant house all by herself, dear. 

Jennifer smiles. “I’ll bring back the plate soon.”

“No hurry.”

Peter waves before going to corral his children, hollering across the lawn, “Cora Hale, you stop right there, or you’ll be riding in the trunk!”

Jennifer hurriedly closes the door. 

+

The cupcakes are chocolate with a raspberry center. 

Julia loved raspberries. 

Jennifer eats them all by herself in between hanging curtains to block out the house next to hers where the beautiful brunette Stepford wife is cleaning the kitchen.

+

Allison has never realized how daunting a blank page can be. 

By the time she finally sat down in Greece to put her idea to paper, it was just about ready to burst out of her skull and write itself. She sat down, opened a new document and didn’t resurface for three weeks, fueled by coffee, ouzo and the sunshine.

But now…

She cleaned up her draft when she got back, holed up in Stiles and Peter’s guest room (the one they keep insisting is hers for as long as she needs it), let Stiles read enough of it for him to rib her mercilessly for a week. 

It’s about a bunch of kids, some of which are human, some of which aren’t. There’s werewolves and banshees, magic and kitsunes, human monsters and monstrous humans, and her heroine, a girl from a long line of monster hunters, right in the middle. 

Her favored weapon is a bow and arrow and Alli insists it’s because she knows the mechanics of shooting a bow, but Stiles claims it’s because of some stupid comment he made over a year ago. She lets him have it, because he’s an obnoxious dick at times and it’s easier to let him win the small battles, sometimes.

For a while, the heroine and the monsters fight each other, but they get over it, eventually, and start fighting prejudice instead, fighting their heritage and what they’re supposed to be. 

In the end, it’s a battle for their right to choose who they want to be and what they want to die for and she never let Stiles see that part. Not yet. 

Not quite. 

Instead she called a few old friends from work before Greece and someone hooked her up with Meredith, a quiet, mousy looking agent with a fierce attitude, who was willing to take Allison on. 

Except, “That ending is terrible,” she said during their first meeting, sipping coffee and looking at Allison like a cat looks at a snack. 

“They deserve a happy ending,” Alli defended. 

“It’s like the Harry Potter epilogue. It completely devalues your messages about war, about sacrifice. The story is a good match for the darker YA category, but not with an ending like that. You create warriors, Allison, child soldiers who do battle. They lose. They hurt. And then, just like that, it’s all butterflies and unicorns?”

She passed Alli back her manuscript, annotated out the wazoo. “Change the ending and I’ll get you published. But not like this.”

So here Alli is, three weeks later, still staring at a blank page.

With a sigh and a grunt, she kicks away from the dining room table and pads into the kitchen to make herself another coffee. 

While the machine heats up, she starts stacking the dishes from breakfast into the washer. Peter usually does it before he leaves for work, or makes the kids to it, but Laura insisted on annoying the new neighbor before school, so it’s all in stacks on the counter. 

Since they still refuse to at least let Allison pay something like rent, she tries to help out in other ways and besides, she could use something to clear her mind. So, switching off the coffee machine again, she starts cleaning up instead. Dishes in the washer, clear off the counters, wipe them down. After that, she takes apart the coffee machine and the kettle, cleans out the fridge and cabinets. 

By the time she gets hungry, it’s past noon, the kitchen is sparkling and she still hasn’t had coffee. 

She needs out of this house. 

She considers going to meet the new neighbor hanging curtains across the lawn, but Laura’s already been and Alli tries not to let _all_ of Stiles’ bad habits rub off on her. She does not assimilate people. The woman deserves her peace, especially after dealing with Laura way too early in the morning. No dice. 

Changing, she throws a few bags in her car and makes her way to her favorite coffee shop. Buys herself a macchiato and adds a latte and two cookies to her order out of a habit even a year abroad couldn’t break. 

She missed Stiles. They had Skype dates all the time (all of them did), each with their own coffee, chatting or hours, and they texted endlessly, but it wasn’t the same. 

Now that she’s got him back, she’s not quite willing to give him up again. Which might be why she hasn’t pushed the moving out issue as much as she should have. Oh, well. 

She can always pay rent in expensive coffee runs, she figures, walking the three blocks to _Yarnsome_ on autopilot. 

The place looks the same as it always has, except a lot more crowded. She gives Mason, Liam’s friend and Stiles’ newest minion, a smile of thanks as he holds the door for her in passing and then offers a prompt, “He’s trying to make sense of the stock.”

From halfway across the store, it’s obvious he’s not having much success. The door leading to the storage room is half hidden behind various cartons, boxes, crates and plastic bags. Allison weaves through them and kicks the door open with one foot, almost braining her best friend in the process. He yelps, jumps and is already opening his mouth to bitch out whoever snuck back here, when he realizes who she is. 

Then his scowl turns into a tired smile and Alli will never, ever understand why Stiles thinks he’s plain and weird looking. He’s gorgeous all the time since he grew into his ears and limbs, but when he smiles people run into walls.

She beams back with a baby’s reflex and offers her bribe. “Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi,” she simpers as he falls on the cookie bag like she didn’t see him scarf down four eggs and a side of bacon less than five hours ago. 

“Pull up a box, Princess Leia,” he allows, once he’s unwrapped his spoils. “And tell me all your woes.”

Dropping onto a squishy box full of yarn that gives a little under her weight, she sighs. “It’s that ending again. I just can’t figure out what to do!”

“Find a different agent?” he suggests, not for the first time. 

“Not helpful! I’m unpublished and it’s a miracle Meredith wants to take me on. I am not sending her packing!”

“Then I have no ideas.” Seeing her pout, he defensively adds, “Look, Alli Cat, you’ve been turning this thing over and over for weeks. I’ve made all the suggestions I have. You just need to pick something, stick with it, and bull through. You’re not usually this insecure.”

Taking a vengeful bite of her own cookie, Allison sighs. “Maybe I was wrong, writing is hard after all, and I should stick to what I know.”

“Wow. Who are you and what have you done with my kickass, bow-wielding, brilliant, beautiful maniac of a best friend?”

She waves a hand in his face. “She’s on vacation. This is insecure, inexperienced, sleep-deprived Allison speaking.”

Stiles chews on that, and his cookie, for a while. Then he offers, “I literally have no clue. Aside from hugs and distractions, I have nothing to offer.”

Not really having expected miracles, she shrugs and, “I’ll take it.”

“Good.” A moment later, she’s engulfed in a Super Special Stilinski Hug TM, complete with octopus arms, snuffling on the neck and too hard squeezing. He holds on way past socially acceptable time limits before letting go, tugging on one of her curls and informing her, “I have a baby class in half an hour. Under sixes. You’re my assistant.”

It’s not a solution, but it’ll do. And really, a bunch of children armed with pointy objects and too much energy are exactly the kind of thing she needs to get out of her funk. That, and Stiles always plies them with the good candy and if she plays her cards right, she can sneak at least half of it. 

To save the children from the dentist. Obviously. Not for any nefarious purposes, like eating it herself. No, sir, she wouldn’t do that. 

“I can see you plotting,” Stiles announces as she kicks two overflowing boxes of thread under a groaning shelf and rips open a third to compare its contents with the sharpied notes on the sides. 

“I also need to find a way to get Liam and Mason to stop making out while pretending to do inventory. Goddamn it!” He pulls out a fistful of large crochet hooks and holds them up next to the note saying, _blank cards, var/sizes_.

Allison shrugs. “Spray bottle?”

He snorts. “There’s raw silk yarn over there. It’d be ruined.”

This time she laughs because trust Stiles to prioritize yarn before just about anything else. Instead of listening to the rest of his rant, she grabs the ragged box by the door, filled with _supplies, bb/class_ and makes for the kitchen. Hot chocolate is going to go perfectly with all the other sugar. 

Screw literature. At least she can help make parents hate Stiles. 

+


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's mostly filler, and also the end of my pre-written stuff. I guess that means I actually need to try and make a plan for this now. Orrrrr I could try that bath pouf crochet thing I found earlier.... Choices, choices. (We all know I'll be pulling out my needles before dinner, but, you gotta let me pretend.)
> 
> I forgot to say this last chapter, but guys. Seriously. Guys. You apparently all waited around for the past year for this and you've been supportive and happy and squeeee-y about this and I can't tell you how much I adore each and ever single comment and kudo I get. I usually don't stop grinning all day after an update. Thank you for that.

+

Amy lives in a chic apartment, third floor, and opens the door with a flourish to allow the Hale/Stilinski clan in. They’re thirty minutes early because Stiles was fretting over Amy needing help preparing. Aside from Isaac, she’s the only one of them living alone so she has no-one to assist and it’s her first time hosting to boot and what if she forgot something, or hasn’t finished with everything and what if aliens kidnap her and the whole evening is ruined?!

In another life, Stiles would have made a brilliant den mother. Slightly psychotic, but brilliant. He could worry a pack of rabid werewolves into domesticity.

As it is, Amy opens the door, stares at them and then rolls her eyes. “Control freaks,” she admonishes. “Both of you.”

Then she waves them through. Stiles sticks out his tongue and then helps Cora wrestle off her shoes before she does it herself and ends up hitting someone in the face with them. Again. 

By the time Peter has closed the door, Amy has all the kids lined up in the open plan living room. “Got something for you guys,” she announces, disappears behind the couch and comes back up with a huge plastic box with a lid on it. 

Peter and Stiles exchange looks. Stiles cocks an eyebrow. Peter shakes his head. She didn’t mention anything at work today. 

The paralegal puts the box down on the floor in front of the trio and pulls off the lid. Peter cranes his neck enough to see inside. There’s several board and card games, DVDs with kids’ movies, toy cars, a play carpet and a small cache of yarn and needles. All of it is brand new and shiny. 

Derek starts pulling the yarn apart immediately and Cora climbs into the box to snuggle the carpet. Laura squints at the adult. “You got us toys?”

Excellent question. It’s not like the three of them don’t have three entire rooms full of toys, already. And a myriad of aunts and uncles that keep. Buying. More. 

“Technically,” Amy counters, “I bought toys for me.” She waves a hand around the room. “Grown-up apartment. Boring. So this is going in my hall closet for when you guys visit. Cool?”

There has to be at least two hundred dollars’ worth of crap in that box. And Stiles did make the children bring entertainment because he had his parenting routine perfected for way before Peter did. 

Before Peter can open his mouth to complain, offer compensation or just call his minion crazy, Laura flings herself past Derek and hugs Amy around the waist. 

“Cool,” she agrees, not too grown-up yet to get excited over Disney movies and UNO. 

Stiles, being Stiles, just joins in the hug. “You’re awesome,” he decrees. The fact that the needles are bearing his shop’s logo probably isn’t hurting.

Amy beams until she meets Peter’s gaze. “Oh, shut it, bossman,” she complains before he even opens his mouth. “I do what I want. Besides, it’s for Alli and Paige, too.”

Peter snorts. “Just don’t come to me for a pay raise when they’ve bankrupted you.”

She rolls her eyes at him. “You’re not the one signing my paychecks anyway.”

Well, no. That would be Kali. Peter argues, Ennis is personable and Kali does the numbers. But it’s the principle of the matter. Still, he’s not going to win this. One more person to spoil his kids rotten. 

“I should have seen this coming,” he informs Stiles, who dutifully returns to his side to console him. If a smack on the arm and a kiss to the cheek can be considered consoling. 

“Poor baby. People do nice things for your family.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Peta Da, look!” Cora suddenly shouts. She’s wrestled the carpet out of the box and is now wrapping herself up in it.

“Cora burrito!” Stiles crows and gently kicks her so she keeps rolling along the floor, screeching with glee. Derek, meanwhile, has pulled all the yarns out of the box and is lining them up on the coffee table by some arcane system only he understands. And Stiles, possibly. Laura is noisily ripping the plastic wrapping off all the toy cars and then throwing them back in the box, _bang, bang, bang_. 

Cora hits a wall, wiggles herself around and demands, “Kick, kick, kick!” causing Derek to sprint over and deliver just that with a war cry of, “Burrito!”

Stiles folds in half from laughing so hard and Peter sends his favorite minion a look. “I hope your neighbors are deaf.”

“Better,” she tells him. “They’re in Florida for the winter.”

“You planned this,” Peter realizes. 

She grins. “You did hire me for my brain.”

“And your gossip skills,” he concedes. 

“And that. Now come help me with the salad, I’m not nearly done.”

She tows him toward the kitchen, ignoring Stiles’ shout of, “I knew it!”

“You’re early!”

+

“Soooo,” Stiles greets on Monday, after a successful Pizza Night and a weekend spent keeping the kids from trying to assimilate the new neighbor. They invited Amy for Sunday lunch to thank her for the kiddie box, and she spent most of the afternoon helping them devise ever more harebrained schemes to ‘accidentally’ meet the neighbor. By the time Peter kicked his minion out, they were drawing up plans for a catapult and trying to find a helmet for Cora. Stiles is living with maniacs. He is enjoying it immensely.

He puts a coffee to go on Helen’s desk. “This guy’s good, right?”

Helen accepts the cup with a smile and motions for him to sit down. She’s wearing the earrings her made for her birthday. The turquoise looks stunning on her. “Bobby is brilliant at his job and unorthodox enough work for you.”

“Hey, I can do mainstream!” Stiles argues, because he totally can. 

Helen gives his shirt a pointed look. It’s new, screaming pink and declares, _I knit so I don’t kill people_ in bold letters. Laura gave it to him for his birthday last month, okay? It’s also true. He pouts, taking a sip of his own coffee. 

Leaning back in her chair, Helen asks, “So, have you thought about the interior, yet? I know a few great designers, if you want.”

He blinks at her, does a little math and realizes that nope, Helen and Paige have never seen a major project going on since they started hanging with the rest of the gang. 

“CoA Projects & Co,” he says, by way of answer. Then, before she can ask what that is, he clarifies, “Cult of Awesome. Last time around, I found the store simply by virtue of walking past it every day on my way to campus. Erica designed the walls, Boyd built the furniture, Alli did my advertisement, Kira built me a website, Lydia did the legal stuff and the rest of us the menial labor. We did the same for Scott’s clinic, just about every move anyone’s ever done and little Alli’s nursery.”

For a very long moment, the woman just blinks at him. Then she chuckles. “Occasionally I forget that you guys could take over a small country on a weekend, if you chose to.”

“Nah,” Stiles waves it away, “Lyds and I had to, like, promise not to strive for world domination back in freshman year. Apparently, we scared a few people with our intensity.”

They did both finish school a full year ahead of schedule while keeping down part time jobs at the same time, though, so a bit of intensity is expected. Stiles still remembers the nights spent cramming with Lyds, Red Bull and espresso. Those were the days. 

“Also, we, not you. And when you finally find a decent place, we’re helping you move, so in case you’ve included movers in your calculations, strike them.”

The Krasikeva girls are currently living in a shoebox, because without her ex around to help, Helen had to scale down her hours to be there for Paige and thus, money has been tight. It’s no longer an issue now, because the gang was already juggling care for four kids, so they just added Derek’s BFF into the mix, leaving Helen free to work full time again. 

Last time they talked, she had her eyes on a cute little two bedroom house not far from Erica and Boyd’s place. 

For a moment, the older woman gets that constipated grateful look again, the one she got when they showed her Paige’s new afterschool time table (Mondays and Thurdays at the store, Tuesdays with Boyd, Wednesdays with Peter and Fridays with Allison, just like the rest of the brood). But she fights it down and throws Stiles a snappy salute instead. “Aye aye, Captain.”

“Good woman,” he praises, just as someone knocks on the door and then blows into the office without waiting for an invitation. 

Helen snorts fondly and stands to introduce them. “Stiles, this is Bobby Finstock, Bobby, this is Stiles Stilinski, your newest client. Have fun, you two!”

And then she promptly kicks them out of her office. Finstock sticks out his hand, “Bilinski,” he greets. “Call me Bobby.”

“Stilinski, actually,” Stiles corrects, bemused. “And call me Stiles.”

The man nods and spins on his heel, hollering for Stiles to follow as he strides down the hallways to his own office. For a guy in his forties with a semi-paunch and a receding hairline, he’s fast. Stiles races to catch up and makes it into the man’s office just in time to miss getting bitch slapped by the door. 

“Sit. So, store front with a backroom and a storage room, windows preferred, buy or rental option, downtown, ‘quirky wanted’, whatever that means, thousand square feet, round about, not furnished,” he reads off the e-mail Helen forwarded him with Stiles’ specifications. He looks up, eyebrows raised. “You’re not sitting.”

Stiles sits.

“Did I miss anything?”

“Nope, sounds about right.”

The man nods slowly. “Okay, kid. Fact? The only way you’re getting a space like that downtown is if you shell out an exorbitant amount of money. Helen says you got a well-going business, but we’re talking rob a leprechaun at gunpoint money, here. You catch me?”

Well. At least Stiles knows what Helen meant with ‘unorthodox’ now. The man leans over his desk aggressively. “Do you get me?!”

“You’re giving me flashbacks to high school,” Stiles blurts, leaning away from the man. "Did you coach a sport at some point in your life?”

Big grin. Frighteningly big grin. Stiles is reminded of the year Derek was obsessed with Shark Week. “Four years of college lacrosse up in Washington. Now, have. You. Been. Listening?” He speaks slowly, nodding along to every word. 

Stiles sighs. “Yes. My specs are impossible.”

“Yep. You got lucky the first time around. I’ve got a copy of your current lease and you’ll never, ever get anything this cheap again. You sure expanding is worth it?”

“I have more business than the store can handle right now.”

That gets him a grimace. “Hipster bullshit. Anyway. Suburbs?”

Stiles lives off of college students and the elderly, neither of which have the transport necessary to follow him out of the city center. “No.”

“Strip mall?”

And sell his soul to corporate mainstream? “Nope.”

“You’re friends with Helen?”

What? “Yes?”

“Excellent!” Bobby punches his desk. “Perfect.” He leans in again. “Here’s the deal, kid. You help me land that lady, I find you your store and haggle a decent price for you, even if it costs me my soul.”

Generally speaking, Stiles doesn’t get overwhelmed by people a lot. Usually, he’s the overwhelming party, not the overwhelmed. Bobby Finstock is too much for even him to follow, though. “You want me to set you up with your own coworker, who happens to be my friend, in exchange for doing your job, which I pay you for?”

“Yes.” For the first time, Bobby loses some of his manic intent. “Look, Helen’s a swell woman, okay? She’s smart, she’s gorgeous, she has a great sense of humor and she likes sports. Her kid’s cute as a button and I am awful at talking to either of them without seeming like a crazy person.” He twirls a finger at his temple. Stiles wonders whatever might give people the impression that the other man’s a few skeins short of a sweater. “Cray-zay! So please, help me.” 

He actually folds his hands and bows his head. His hairline is receding drastically and Stiles is pretty sure he dyes what’s left. Still. That… is a lot more heartfelt than Stiles expected, and also weirdly cute and, “You are aware that this is real life and not a rom com cliché, right?”

That earns him a dead-eyed look. “Kid, if it were, I’d have landed the lady by now. Believe me, there have been enough shenanigans to land her half a dozen times over.”

Stiles, while not happy with a stranger talking about ‘landing’ one of his friends, can’t quite help himself. “Shenanigans?”

Bobby smacks one fist onto his desk, then raises it and starts ticking off on his fingers, “I tried asking her out, we got interrupted. Five times. I brought her flowers, the receptionist turned out to be allergic, the ambulance kind of overshadowed the whole thing. I bought her chocolates, the card slipped from the wrapping and landed in the trash, so she thought they were a customer’s attempt at sucking up and put them in the break room. They were Swiss chocolates! Do you have any idea what those mountain dwelling goblins take for a few pieces of chocolate! Do you!” He has crazy eyes. “Do you see my problem?!?”

Stiles takes it back. This is definitely a rom com cliché. He wedges the stud of his lip piercing between his teeth and tugs to keep from laughing. Hard. Jesus, but the luck of this guy. And he looks gutted by all of it. And tenacious. Tenacious means he’s serious and he’s obviously willing to go a long way for Helen, even if he has no game. Flowers and chocolates? No. Game. At all. 

Eventually, the pain from his lip wins over the urge to break into loud guffaws. “That sounds… serious,” he observes. And Peter keeps saying Stiles has no poker face. 

The other man gives a wail-like cry of despair and flops onto his desktop, almost sending his laptop skidding off the edge. Fighting the urge to look for hidden cameras, Stiles catches the computer and pats the man awkwardly on the arm. He’s kind of afraid of tackle hugs at this point, to be honest. 

“Okay,” he offers after a moment of consideration, helped along by the offers pulled up on the laptop in his handsd. He really can’t afford that kind of money. So deal with the devil it is. “I’ll put in a good word for you. _Just_ a good word. Nothing more. Consent is sexy and all that. _If_ you find me a place that matches my specs.”

Bobby shoots up from his prone position like Cora on a sugar rush. “Deal!” he crows, grabs his laptop back, pulls up google and zooms in on a map of the city. “What radius are we talking? Neighborhood? Is campus a good thing for your hipster crap, or should we stay away from there?”

Stiles blinks. He mentally apologizes to anyone he’s ever run roughshod over, because this completely concussed, I-missed-something feeling is actually not as much fun as it looks from the outside. 

Then he scoots his chair around the desk and gets to work. 

+

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, a friend put a flea in my ear about a craft blog? Sorta semi-related to HYS. Do I? Don't I? Opinions?


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tiny smudge of angst in the form of Jenny PoV and food shenanigans. I feel like food is becoming way too important for this verse. Should I stop writing hungry?
> 
> Also, Stiles' project is my current project. I'll post pics and a link to the pattern on my tumblr (wordsformurder) later tonight.

+

Jennifer brings back the plate.

It takes her almost a full week, but eventually, she works up the nerve to walk across the lawn separating their houses and ring the doorbell. 

And ring it again. 

By the third time, the little boy she saw chasing the toddler last week opens, a scowl on his face that would be impressive on people twice his age. He squints at her suspiciously. “Who are you?”

She fights the urge to bend down to his level, because it’s patronizing, and also she’s a little afraid he might bite her nose off. Instead she brandishes the plate and offers, “I’m Jennifer. I moved in next door? Your… sister brought me cupcakes, I’m just returning the plate.”

He studies her for a long moment, then shrugs and steps into the foyer, not letting go of the door. “Stiles!” He shouts. “Door!”

Whoever, or whatever a Stiles is, they make a lot of noise as they come clattering downstairs. “What have I told you about opening the door, Derek Michael Hale!”

Derek turns his dark look on the man coming up from behind him. Dark hair, bright eyes, piercings, tattoos. He looks like the kind of person Jennifer’s mother calls ‘hooligan’ and Julia loved to strike up conversations with. Somehow, she always got them to let her take their pictures. 

A Stiles is definitely not a Stepford wife. Nanny, maybe? Although Jennifer can’t imagine Peter Hale hiring this man to look after his kids. 

But hooligan or not, Stiles puts his hands on the kid’s shoulder and bends down to look him in the eye. “There are bad people in the world,” he starts, and the boy dutifully picks up, “and we’re making it as hard as possible to get at us.”

Nodding, Stiles offers his hand for a fist bump, receives it and then shuffles Derek toward the stairs, where he disappears, leaving the adults alone. Jennifer holds up her plate like a shield and hates herself a bit for it. 

“Oh,” Stiles crows, “You’re the new neighbor. Hi! I’m Stiles, you met Peter, my partner. Come in, come in, how d’you like it so far?”

Somehow, she finds herself sitting in a spacious kitchen, a cup of coffee in front of her, Stiles sitting across the table, chin in hands, waiting for her answer without any memory of how she got from point A to point B.

“It’s – nice,” she hedges, unsure how to put ‘I haven’t left the house because I spend at least an hour a day crying my eyes out, so I haven’t seen much yet’ into socially acceptable terms. Julia would have known how. Julia always knew what words to use to charm people in front of her camera, to capture them, to make them smile. Julia was a social butterfly. Jennifer is the moth that only comes out in the dark.

Something about the way Stiles’ eyes sharpen and his head tilts just so, tells her he heard some of that, somehow. He takes a sip from the glass of water perched at his elbow, and it’s slow enough that she can read the quote scrolling along his wrist. 

_Beware; for I am fearless, therefore powerful._

“ _Frankenstein_?”

He looks surprised for the moment, then beams, baring his arm properly to let her get a better look. “Yeah. Well spotted. Most people can’t place it, too obscure. It’s one of my favorite books and it fits, so, you know?” He beams proudly. “You like the classics?”

Jennifer shrugs, a bit helpless. “I teach English. High school. I try to fit in as many of the actual classics as I can.”

He chuckles. “Less dead white men?”

“Exactly!” She smiles back, because so few people understand why she’d rather read _Frankenstein_ than _Catcher in the Rye_ with her kids. It’s not just that Mary Shelley was a woman, it’s that she was a teenage girl inventing an entire literary genre a century before men followed in her footsteps. What did Salinger ever do, compared to that. 

They share a moment of pure, unadulterated nerd-connection, before Stiles asks, “Did you move here for work, then?”

And just like that, the mood is ruined. And Jennifer hates herself for it, because it’s been more than a year. She should have moved on by now, should be more than a pile of broken pieces shoved together in some corner, the aftermath of a mess that no-one bothered to clean up properly. She should be more than the memory of her wife. 

“Sorry,” Stiles back-pedals immediately and she likes him, damn it, she doesn’t want to scare him off. He likes good books and that means he’s probably a good person.

“No, no, it’s fine. I just…,” he said ‘partner’ earlier and he’s friendly and open. Kind. “My wife died. Last year. I… we always planned to move to California, so here I am.” She makes a little ta-da motion with both hands and then grabs her coffee to drain it, just so she can not look at the pity in his gaze. 

She can tell he’s about to say something, when one of the kids – Laura, the flummy – comes slamming into the kitchen. “Stiles! Stiles! Stiles! We’re hungry, what’s for dinner!”

“Peter’s bringing back Thai, should be here in half an hour.”

She notices Jennifer, waves, announces, “Too much take-out will stunt our growth. Bad parenting, Stiles!”

“That’s the plan,” he fires back without missing a beat. “That way, you’ll have tiny hands forever and I can use you for child labor at the store! Mwahahahah!”

She rolls her eyes, hard, sticks out her tongue and then races out the same way she came in, calling over her shoulder, “Liar!” followed by, “Der-Bear! We’re having Thai! I’m eating all your dumplings!”

Jennifer blinks at the empty doorway. 

“Sorry,” Stiles offers after a moment or two. “It’s my best friend’s baby-sitting day today and she feeds them sugar just to make my life harder. Which is kind of stupid, considering she lives here and has to suffer right alongside the rest of us, but she’s determined.” He shrugs, what can you do.

Then he fully turns back to Jennifer and his expression tells her that he hasn’t forgotten where they were before Hurricane Laura blew through. 

There’s no pity in his gaze, though, when he says, “That sounds like a hard time. If you need anything, even if it’s just some company, don’t hesitate to come over, okay? Everyone in this house knows from grief, including the kids.” His expression hardens momentarily. “We’re experts by now.”

He sounds like he means it, too. Not like her parents, who gave her ‘there, there’s for a few months and then started trying to set her up on dates with other widowers. Men, of course. Or her friends, who lost patience after a while, when she didn’t seem to get better, and just started drifting away. Not like Julia’s parents, who flat out told her their daughter died because she seduced her into sin and this is the price God demanded for their straying from the path. 

Suddenly, she’s biting back tears and for once, they’re not tears of grief but of anger, because darn it, why is a complete stranger kinder to her than the people that are supposed to be her family ever were? Why does he understand – 

She wipes at her nose with the back of her hand, real ladylike, and puts down her cup too hard. “I… thank you, but I should go.”

Thankfully, Stiles doesn’t try to stop her. He just nods, leads the way to the door. Then, at the last moment, he says, “Hey, I was serious, okay? That was not a polite platitude. Come over. It’s fine.” He winks. “Us lit nerds have to stick together, right?”

And with that, he lets her escape. 

+

Stiles closes the door on Jennifer Blake’s hunched back and leans against the door, taking one deep breath, two deep breaths, three deep breaths. He doesn’t regret making his offer, even if he’s ninety percent sure the woman won’t take him up on it, but it was hard, looking at her. 

His dad looked like that for years and years, after mom, and Stiles did, too. Alli did, after her mother and aunt, and Scott after his dad left and the kids. Jesus, the kids. Stiles hates that expression on anyone, friend or foe, stranger or family, because it always, always goes straight to the dead, lonely places in his heart. 

On autopilot, one of his hands rises to his opposite shoulder to dig into the very edge of the wings on his back. His reminder. His demons turned out. He stands there for a long minute, pretending he can feel the leathery membranes under the pads of his fingers, the bony arches, the pointy claws. 

The visualization might not be what his shrink had in mind when he taught Stiles the technique when he was eight, but it works for him. 

By the time he opens his eyes, Alli is standing at the foot of the stairs, watching him, wordlessly. She doesn’t ask if he’s okay. She just closes the distance between them and tugs down his arm, thumb digging into the bow and arrow in the crook of his elbow. He settles his free hand on her hip, two crossed needles under her sweater and presses his forehead into her shoulder. 

“Come on,” she says, drags him into the living room and parks him on the sofa. He’s already reaching for his laptop (he has orders to place, e-mails to answer and offers from Bobby to sort through), when she clucks her tongue and shoves a random yarn project at him. 

It’s a shawl, triangular, with a pattern he found on the internet. He’s working with variegated yarn in blues, half meaning to give it to Melissa when it’s done, because it’s flowy and playful and reminds him of her. Alli slaps his hand-written copy of the pattern down on top of it and says, “No work. Relax. I’m setting the table.”

She buzzes a kiss on his temple as she passes on her way into the kitchen and Stiles pushes down the urge to downplay his mini-breakdown just now and follow her. Instead he sits. And he crochets. 

Double, single, popcorn, he loses himself in the rhythm of it the way he always has, barely even noticing when Derek comes to snuggle up next to him and watch or when Alli humming in the kitchen turns to conversation between her and the girls. 

He does notice when Peter comes breezing in, a cloud of food smell wafting from him. He passes the bags to his nephew and bends to press a kiss to Stiles’ jaw. 

“Hello, sweetheart,” he croons, smile in his voice. Good day, then. Stiles leans his head back and gets a Spiderman kiss for his efforts. 

“Hi,” he answers, belatedly, sounding breathless like a sixth grader with a crush. Peter’s smile turns smug. 

Stiles slaps his shoulder, finishes the repeat of the pattern and sets everything on the table to stand and let Peter tow him into the kitchen, arm over his shoulder. Warm, snuggly Peter. Best medicine. 

Alli nudges him with her hip as he passes her and he nudges back. Everything a-okay again. He lets Laura and Derek’s banter wash over him as he sits between them, to minimize the risk of food fights breaking out. Cora scales her high chair like a pro and plops herself down in it just in time for Stiles to deliver her plate of rice and veggies. 

“Meat!” she demands. She has recently discovered the joys of chicken wings and especially the way the grease stains never, ever come out again, so she demands meat with every meal. Before that, it was chocolate sauce (damn you, Laura) and before that, she’d only eat banana smeared with peanut butter for a month (damn you double, Lydia Martin).

“Eat!” he shoots back, confiscates the chopsticks Laura is using to try and skewer all the dumplings she can reach and raises an eyebrow as Peter leans against the counter next to Alli, watching it all and muttering something under his breath. 

Alli stops counting out napkins, stares. 

Peter scowls.

Alli stares some more. 

Stiles absently blocks Laura’s next thieving scheme and snags one of the dumplings for himself, still watching. They’re whispering now. His boyfriend and his best friend are whispering.

Before he can decide which kid to sic on them as punishment for excluding him, they part, Alli nods once, smacks Peter on the ass (Hey! That belongs to Stiles!) and then comes over to sit down. 

Peter crowds out Derek and drops into his emptied seat. 

“What was that about?” Stiles asks. 

Peter turns that smarmy, self-satisfied lawyer grin on Stiles and says, “I’m plotting. Patience, my dear.”

To preempt any protests, he leans over for another kiss.

By the time he pulls back, all dumplings have magically migrated to his plate. 

“Alli,” Stiles drawls, subtly directing Laura toward her uncle. “You’ll tell me, won’t you?”

She eeps. Allison Argent, badass extraordinaire, eeps. Then she blushes. Then she chortles. “Peter would kill me,” she tells him.

“Why would Peter kill you?” Laura demands. She has already snuck back her chopsticks and is zeroing in on the outermost dumpling on Peter’s plate. Stiles carefully leans out of the way, pretending to feel a sudden and overwhelming urge to stretch. Crochet is hard on the shoulders. Sue him.

“Because,” Peter informs her, brandishing his fork threateningly, “loose lips sink ships, you little thief. Remember who pays your allowance.”

Laura beams at him. “Stiles does.”

Which is… sort of true. Peter tends to lose track and give it to the kids too often. Stiles is more used to dealing with crafty little cheaters from work, so he actually notes down when they get their weekly cash and doesn’t fall for any tricks. 

It’s still technically Peter’s money, though. As long as Stiles doesn’t get to pay utilities or rent or _anything_ , he refuses to get a joint account with Peter. He’s kind of cutting off his nose to spite his face with that, he’s aware, but Peter is a control freak and a tyrant and he needs someone to tell him no at least some of the time. 

The Silent Dumpling War _and_ the conversation both end when Derek leaps on the table and steals Peter’s entire plate before making off with it, cackling madly. 

They all watch him go. Cora spits rice. “Want meat!” she declares, unperturbed. “Wings.” She flaps her arms. Alli absently pats her on the head and forks a piece of beef onto her plate. Everyone else ignores the byplay to stare at the empty doorway.

“You know,” Peter drawls, idly, “we probably shouldn’t encourage that kind of behavior, but that was actually smooth.”

Stiles snorts a laugh. “Dear, we’re been letting them get away with this shit for two years. It’s way too late for table manners, they’re all goddamn savages now.”

“Shit,” Cora chants, beef in her mouth. “Shit, shit!”

“Or any kind of manners, really,” Stiles amends, leaning into Peter’s side because even if it’s chaos, it’s his chaos and it’s the best antidote he’s yet found against the demon on his back. 

+  
 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever, thank you guys for being you. My headstart has shrunk to half a chapter, so the update rate is probably going to drop after today, but I'll do my best. And hey, we all know I'm bribe-able.

\+ 

Stiles might be suspicious, but Peter times his request for Allison carefully. 

In full view of Stiles and the kids, she can neither squeal, nor jump, nor hug him. All she can do is give him the Disney Eyes and whisper, “Are you kidding me?” increasingly shrilly.

But there is dinner to be had and dumplings to be defended and by the time that’s done with and the monsters fed and pacified, she has calmed down enough for a reasonable conversation. 

Or so Peter thinks, until Stiles hauls Cora off to bed, Derek and Laura go play and Peter is left alone in the kitchen. He gets glomped from behind, squeezed hard enough to cut off his air supply and, yep, there’s the squealing. Right in his ear, in a pitch that would make dogs whimper. 

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, you fucking asshole, I hate you so much, this is awesome, when do we start?”

Peter carefully dries his soapy hands on a dishrag and then uses them to dislodge his Argent-shaped growth from his neck. He takes a deep breath. Another. Ah, sweet oxygen. Then he turns to face his partner’s best find, only to find her… well, she’s not exactly jumping in place. More… vibrating. 

And grinning hard enough that his face hurts just from looking at her. She’s also flushed bright red and opening and closing her hands rhythmically.

Peter may have made a tactical error. 

He decides it’s time to deflect and redirect. 

“Follow me,” he tells her, lets go and leads the way into his home office. Stiles calls it his hidey hole full of paper. Peter refuses to dignify that with any sort of reaction, even if it’s not entirely inaccurate. 

(He used to have dignity of some sort, before Stiles and the kids. He doesn’t miss it at all.)

In the office the drops into his obscenely expensive leather chair and reaches into the bottommost drawer to retrieve a file. 

Once Alli has closed the door behind herself and sat down, he passes it to her. 

She flips it open, reads the first few lines, leafs through the rest of the package and then, well. To her credit, she does try to keep it in. Peter is still sure he can hear the window panes sing in their frames from the intensity of her screech. 

She drops the file into her lap, slaps both hands over her mouth and shoots a guilty look at the ceiling, where Stiles is currently wrestling Cora through her post-meal scrub-down. Ever since Peter proposed hosing her down in the yard, Stiles refuses to let him handle her anymore. 

Eventually, Alli stops vibrating in place. Experimentally, she removes her hands. When no new eruptions follow, she takes a deep breath and, “Oh my god, it gets better, you giant fucking softie, Stiles is going to bawl like a baby!”

Peter holds out his hand for the file until she passes it back, then carefully hides it back in the drawer. He leans across the desk, hands steepled under his chin. “What I need from you,” he tells her, “are two things.”

One finger, “A distraction so I can talk to the children without danger of interruption and then calm them down enough afterwards to avoid them giving away the game, no matter what they decide.”

An elegant eyebrow hitches up. “Come on, Peter, we both know what they’ll decide. Those kids are almost as gone on the human catastrophe I call my best friend as you are.”

He waves away her interruption. “I’d rather be prepared for the worst and hope for the best. Either way, if they say no, those papers never see the light of day and you will never, ever tell Stiles they ever existed. Are we clear?”

There is something hard about Allison Argent, behind the Disney eyes and the hair and the happy attitude. Peter forgets it, because he usually sees her around Stiles and their friends, around his kids. 

Stiles has told Peter only parts of their high school days, but he has mentioned, off-handedly, more than once, how Allison went wrong after losing half her family in one fell swoop. How she shut down, turned her grief to aggression and once beat a boy into the hospital for touching her simply because she didn’t know where to put her rage. He told Peter about how, when it was Stiles hunting down the dick bag that shot his father, it was Allison who backed him up and then, once his revenge was done, yanked him back. 

How they kept each other sane. 

But Peter forgets that that Allison is still somewhere inside this Alli, because he only ever met the mature, happy version. 

But she’s there right now, across the desk, her dark eyes narrowed and her lips drawn in a tight line. She knows what it would do to Stiles to know about this, if it goes wrong. She knows it would break him. 

And he knows, even before she nods solemnly, that she won’t let that happen. 

There is a small pause, an acknowledgement, however unintentional, of all the things they would both do to keep Stiles safe, sane and happy. Because he takes care of everyone and sometimes, sometimes, he needs someone to look after him in turn. And that’s them. And Lydia, too, because that woman’s love has teeth and if her and Stiles were in any way at all sexually compatible, Peter would never have stood a chance. 

The moment passes and Peter offers his second finger. “Two. Ring shopping. I do not, under any circumstances, want you interfering with the rest of it. I’ll do it myself and I’ll do it alone because god knows, you people are already way too involved in my life. I do not need you to ‘help’ me propose to my partner. Is that clear?”

“Provide distraction. Help acquire ring. Do not organize flashmob. Affirmative.” She even salutes. Brat. 

Well. That part’s done with, at least. Peter slumps into his chair. “Fantastic. Now, what the hell kind of ring do I buy a craft-obsessed comic-book and literature nerd who works with his hands for a living, has no appreciation for fine or expensive things and routinely manages to lose the _piercing attached to his face_?”

Alli is laughing at him. 

“I hate you,” he says.

“No you don’t,” she fires back, instantly, grin on her face.

And he’s been obviously spending too much time around her and Stiles, because his automatic response to that is, “No, I don’t.”

+

Stiles waits. 

Stiles is patient, the way any true predator is, and so he lies in wait for the perfect moment, quiet and unassuming. He lets his prey come to him, perfectly calm and collected, prepared to strike before the prey even knows he’s there. They’ll never see him coming. 

At least, that’s the plan.

In reality, Alli sees the look on his face, snags a passing Mason by the hood and drags him backwards to use a human shield, never mind that he almost topples over, arms full of quilting fabrics, and three aggressive grandmas waiting for him across the store. 

“Oh no,” she crows from behind him, “I’m not telling you a word. Peter would skin me alive and wear me as a sweater.”

Involuntarily, they all pause to let that mental image sink in. Mason tries to wiggle away. Alli huffs, smacks his arm and shoves him forward, letting him go. He scurries away like a man fully aware of the fate he just escaped. Stiles narrows his eyes at his best friend. “He would not. Peter doesn’t wear no-name brands.”

“Burn!” Mason provides from two aisles away, distance growing. 

Alli scowls. “I’m still not telling you.”

“Please?”

“No.”

Stiles chews on his lip ring. It’s neon green and Kira bought it for him as a joke after he lost his last one within three days of putting it in. She said maybe the color might help him keep track of it. Scott suggested gluing the thing shut. The Sheriff kindly suggested taking it out because Stiles is a thirty-year-old business owner and quasi-father of three. Stiles laughed in his face. 

But that’s not the point. The point is that Alli is here, on his turf, and she knows something. 

Squinting at her, he asks, “It’s nothing bad, is it?” 

She rolls her eyes at him. Hard. Apparently, Peter’s rubbing off on her, and that’s a bad thought, because rubbing off leads to sex and that leads to Stiles not wanting sex and Peter being sexual and what if he finally has enough of jerking off in the shower? What if he wants someone who will sex him properly? What if he’s looking for the kindest way to extract Stiles from his life after two years of hopeless entanglement, kids and house and car and yarn and books and love and devotion and what if – 

Alli dumps the curry-smelling plastic bag she brought with her onto the counter and hauls him in for a hug and a smack. “Idiot,” she chides. “I can see you going super nova. Stop it.”

“But – “

“Peter is completely, head-over-heels, idiotically in love with you. He shares his children with you. He asked you to move in after six months. He gave up sex for you. Happily, I might add.”

Well. Okay. Yeah. The glee with which Peter dragged Stiles into a sex shop to buy himself all kinds of toys and prove to Stiles, once and for all, that he’s cool with the ace thing, was kind of unholy. And amusing. And it had the intended purpose, which was to shut up the insecure little devil on Stiles’ shoulder. Until about two minutes ago. 

“ _He made a scarf for you_ ,” Alli finishes her tirade and Stiles chuckles into her hair because yeah. That scarf is the saddest thing he’s ever seen, and he saw the one his dad made his mom, way back when. It lives in his craft room now, carefully displayed with all the other family firsts, because his dad still can’t quite look at it. 

After a tight squeeze, he draws back. “I’m an idiot,” he allows, magnanimously. 

His bestie nods, grabs the bag of curry and holds it up. “Yes. Now, have lunch while you listen to me whine about writer’s block.”

“Again?” 

She glares hard enough that he takes half a step back. 

“Yes. This stuff is actually hard. Especially on top of my day job.” 

He holds up a finger for her to wait, helps a couple of college kids out, fetches forks and two bottles of water from the back and then joins Alli on the sofa, where she’s unpacked her spoils. Chicken mango curry. His favorite. 

She sits cross-legged, her own fried rice balanced on one knee, her tablet on the other. “So,” she tells him, accepting the fork and immediately using it to stuff her face, “Iw bwwn wpn’ ‘nstwd.”

She swallows. “I’ve been shopping instead. And I found the cutest thing. Look at this!”

She thrusts her tablet under his face, site already pulled up. Navigating his first fork full of curry around it, he frowns. “Is that… jewelry? Are you buying jewelry to distract yourself from your abject failure?”

Ouch. Alli has pointy elbows. “Yes. Now, what do you think?”

The rings on the screen are all simple and elegant, most of them using some form of wood or mineral to offset the simple gold and silver bands. He chews, swallows and points at one made with dark wood and gold. “I like the wood ones. The others look tacky. What’s that site, anyway?”

“Huh?” she shrugs. “Some guy based out of San Francisco. He takes commissions. I stumbled over him last night. I was actually looking for inspiration for Kate’s heirloom ring.”

Kate? Right. Kate. The main character in her book. Kate, the bow and arrow wielding badass teenager who falls in love with a werewolf, finds out that her family has a long and varied history of slaughtering them, and goes rogue. That Kate. Her characters have sort of taken over Alli’s life, lately. She keeps talking about them like they’re actual people, confusing the shit out of Stiles. 

“She has a ring now?”

“She has a ring,” Alli confirms. “It’s a plot device. I’ve been fine-tuning while avoiding rewriting the ending.” She hums, shrugs, eats quietly for a minute, before asking, “Any progress on the real estate?”

“Nah. Bobby’s looking. He’s sending updates about all the places he’s disqualified, which proves he’s actually doing something, I guess, but also, wow. Super demoralizing.”

“He’ll find something. So, Erica finished the sketch for my Greece-commemoration tattoo. We’re doing it next Saturday, around noon. You’re holding my hand, right?”

“The dolphin?” 

“The dolphin.”

Alli spent her year in Greece finding her inner zen, getting over a few things, having a couple of flings and writing a book. Apparently, that needs to be commemorated on skin. She wanted to do it in Greece, she said, but she couldn’t find an artist as good as Erica, so she waited. 

And Stiles owes her about half a dozen instances of hand holding, so he nods. “Sure. Pick me up here and I’m all yours. I’ll even spring for the anesthetics. And by anesthetics, I mean tequila.”

She cringes. “Think it’ll be that bad?”

“Nah. Not like there’s nerve endings in your foot, or anything. Or bones. Or ligaments. All without any protective layers of fat over them. You’ll be fine, really.”

He pats her head. 

He’s pretty sure she wants to smack him again, but there’s a customer asking for help and she tries not to abuse him in public. Saved by a clueless hipster. Yay!

+

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Out of curiosity, can we get a show of hands of people who have picked up a new hobby / rekindled an old one, because of this giant, crafty mess of a 'verse? Pretty please? I'm super curious. Thank you.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... Six chapters in, I realized I forgot Scott Flippin' McCall. So here goes. 
> 
> Also, thank you. I love you. I will count out all the answers I got to my question and post them at some point, when I have spare time and fingers. There were A LOT of answers and a lot of crafty conversations and it was fun. Thank you!
> 
> Also, also, this story now officially assumes knowledge of all side stories written in this verse.

+

Two years of Lydia randomly showing up at Peter’s firm during the day should have inundated him to surprise visits by terrifying females, but apparently not, if Allison Argent in skin tight jeans and a crop top in his office door shortly after lunch is any indication. 

Around her, Peter can see Mary, his spineless secretary, staring fixedly at Alli’s legs. Behind her, Amy is leaning against a desk and smirking dangerously.

Ah. An inside job. 

He waves Alli inside, not that she needs it, already making for the leather couch off to one side and sinking into it with a sinful groan. “Oh my god, why is your office furniture more comfortable than your home furniture?”

Peter rolls his eyes and motions for Mary to shut the door, even if her kicked puppy expression says she doesn’t want to. “Because I’m not paying three thousand dollars for a sofa that’s just going to get stomped, spat, jumped, sneezed and painted on and randomly stabbed with pointy craft implements.” 

Peter has, literally, lost count of the amount of times he’s sat down at home in the past few years and found a knitting needle with his ass. And the thinner they are, the more Stiles needs, apparently. The ones he uses for socks are tiny and there are five of them at any given time. And they apparently all have a vendetta against Peter’s luxurious derrière. 

“Don’t be mean to Stiles,” Alli chides, because she’s a menace. 

“In this instance, I was actually, for once, talking about my actual children. Now, not that I don’t appreciate you casting aspersions on my child bride, but why are you here?”

She snorts a sharp laugh. “I’m telling him you’re calling him that,” she informs Peter, gleefully. 

He raises an eyebrow. “What makes you think he doesn’t know?”

Studying his face for a moment to look for any trace of a bluff (as if, Peter has been fleecing people at poker since before she was out of diapers – god, he’s old), before grimacing. “I do not need to know the kinky shit that goes on in your bedroom.”

With an eyeroll Peter parries, “Yes, because sleep, nocturnal children and the occasional hand job make for such a kinky lifestyle.”

That actually gives the woman pause. “Stiles actually…” she makes a crude motion with one hand, which Peter just _knows_ Mary caught and is going to use to spread gossip. Not that Amy isn’t going to tell everyone and their PA about Mr. Hale’s hot, brunette affair just for shits and giggles, but. Not the point. 

“I’m sorry, why are we talking about this?” Because Stiles has never made a secret out of his sexuality and god knows, he tends to overshare, but Peter has no interest in airing their private affairs to anyone, even the nosy bunch of millennials he calls his family. (Grudgingly.) Stiles doesn’t like sex, Peter doesn’t pressure him, they work around it. There are toys, there is occasional dirty talk (until Stiles inevitably cracks up) and sometimes the mood strikes Stiles for a little more hands-on approach before he escapes to the bathroom to take care of his own business. He does have a libido. He just doesn’t like other people in it, he told Peter early on.

It _could_ be hurtful, if Peter let it be, but really, Stiles is far too much like winning the goddamn lottery for Peter to get hung up over one little detail. He doesn’t deserve the younger man, he’s fully aware, and in his darker moments sometimes wonders what the fuck Stiles is doing with Peter Fucking Hale, because he’s definitely putting in more than he’s getting out, but Peter. Well. Peter never claimed to be a good man and there is no way he’s letting Stiles go, so he doesn’t point that out. 

Now, Peter suspects Alli already knows all of that, but he still doesn’t want to talk about it, or even know for a fact that she knows. So he raises a sharp eyebrow and waits. 

After a long minute, she huffs, straightens and bends forward to dig through the duffel bag she refers to as a purse and pulls out a bundle of folded print-outs. She flings them toward his desk and he catches them. Barely. 

“What’s this?”

Her grin is…not precisely evil, but shit-eating. “Stiles recently helped me find a ring to use as a plot device in my book. These are pictures of the ones he stared at way too long or complimented in a non-sarcastic way. I’ve marked the ones he liked most off in red. Also, he’s holding my hand Saturday morning for my dolphin tattoo, so we’ll be out of the house for most of the day. He promised me tequila and you know Eri is going to be on board for that, so there’ll be Mexican for lunch and then hefty afternoon drinking. There’s your window, Mr. Bond. Make it count.”

She bows smugly and leans back. 

Peter is, against his will, impressed. “The only reason everyone thinks you’re the harmless one is that you don’t really ping the radar next to Stiles and Lydia, isn’t it?”

“That,” she allows, “and I’m fucking adorable.” She bats her lashes at him while sprawling on his couch, midriff bared, jeans at least a size too small, heels too high for midday, the exact opposite of adorable and fully aware of it. He thinks, not for the first time, that Stiles might be contagious.

And also that he misses that time, early on, when he honestly believed Alli to be as much of a Disney princess as her dimples imply. He knows better now. If she’s any kind of Disney princess at all, it’s Merida. Possibly Mulan. Something armed and badass, to quote his niece, who still worships the ground Allison walks on. Apparently her braid-fu is magical.

With a sigh, he shakes his head. “What do I owe you?”

“Lunch. With Amy.” She stands up, grabs her bag and holds out her hand. Peter pulls out his wallet and folds two crisp fifty dollar bills into her palm. 

“Please make sure she at least shows back up before closing?”

She winks, already on her way to the door. “No promises!”

And then she’s gone. 

Peter regrets everything. 

As he turns back to his work, his gaze lands on the sloppy stack of papers with grainy pictures of rings on them. Well. Almost everything. 

(Goddamn, he never used to be this sappy.)

+

“Maybe he’s finally managed to teach Cora to do tricks on command and he wants to make a show of it?” Stiles muses, passing Scott a screwdriver. 

“Maybe,” Scott hedges. “Or maybe you’re an idiot?” He fiddles with the screwdriver, slips out of the screw once, twice, grunts at it and then scowls. “This is hard.” As soon as he lets the two pieces of railing he slotted together go, they fall apart, clattering to the floor.

Stiles rolls from his butt to his knees and crawls across the carpet to where they left the instructions. “Maybe we should-“

“I can do this!” Scott holler and, yep, he’s got crazy eyes again. Kira’s pregnancy is doing a number on him and she’s not even six months along. Stiles kind of regrets giving up his free afternoon (no work _and_ no kids) to help his crazy-eyed friend build a crib. 

“’Course you can,” he pacifies, “but instructions are actually our friend.” He should know. Patterns, instructions and tutorials are kind of how he makes a living. Well, that and yarn, but, you know. Crafts!

“I can build this crib for my kid, Stiles! I don’t need the instructions.”

Stiles blinks. “You do know that your ability to build a crib in no way reflects on your ability to take care of your yet unborn child, right?”

Scott flings the screwdriver at Stiles in response. It’s actually pointy and kind of hurts. “Ouch! Dude!”

“Don’t psychoanalyze me! Isaac already does that.”

“I’m not!”

“I just,” abruptly, Scott slumps, holds out his hand for the instructions and turns back to the crib. Well. The pieces. The pieces of crib. The future crib. The crib to be. 

Stiles picks up a really funky looking screw and stuffs it into a hole in the crib’s siding that kind of looks big enough. It gets stuck, so he fiddles with it, tugs. It catches on the edge, though, scraping the wood. He surreptitiously drops the screw and offers, “Maybe he’s going to let me yarn bomb the tree in the front yard? It’d be awesome advertising.”

Scott turns the manual in his hands round and round until he figures out which way is up and then shoots his best friend an incredulous look. The crazy eyes have lost at least thirty percent intensity, though. “Peter is not secretly plotting with Alli to let you yarn bomb the front yard of your own house.”

“Well, if you say it like that, it just sounds stupid,” Stiles huffs and flings the funky screw back onto the pile. He studies the pale blue and green walls, tries to figure out why the bottom two thirds are green, the upper part blue and all of it kind of wavy looking. “What’s that supposed to turn into?”

“Huh? Oh, grass. Insects. Eri made a sketch, Kira has it. Kind of _Antz_ but cuter? I want bumblebees.”

Stiles cocks his head to one side, eyes narrowed. “Okay, that’s cool.” 

He can imagine it, too. Erica does amazing cartoon style and even though it’s not something he ever wants on his skin, he can see the way it’s going to look, tall grass everywhere, flowers in a rainbow of colors, all manner of cartoonish, cute insects crawling around. Ladybugs, butterflies, ants, snails, bumblebees, a cutesy spider here and there. Kira and Scott vetoed a one-weekend tour de force job, like they did for little Alli’s nursery, said they wanted time for it to grow, to put in stuff they picked out while they waited for Baby McCall to get here. 

Stiles thinks it’s romantic and adorable (which is basically Kira and Scott in a nutshell, lets be honest). Peter thinks it’s stupid to want to do it alone when they have a squad of people willing to do the annoying parts. Like building cribs from the goddamn Swedish Maze People Tribe.

But if Erica gets to paint the walls, then Stiles can totally add a few touches of his own. He does adorable crochet toys, okay, and Derek’s been practicing his shapes, so he’ll want in and Laura can stitch faces. He’s thinking a fat spider with a web up in the far corner, maybe some rhinestones in the web to make it shimmer and shine, a few more bugs. He can probably blackmail Mason into doing some matching origami to put into a mobile. God knows Stiles has enough crap on that kid. He and Liam are not subtle and way too fond on PDA. And also SDA, which are Storage room Displays of Affection. 

Also, they leave ass-prints on the storage boxes. Eugh. Sometimes people gross Stiles out so bad. He’s planning on hiring Mrs. Cendrowski, an eighty-seven-year-old loyal customer with her blue hair permanently in curlers and a walker she uses mostly to ram ‘youn’ folks’’ ankles, to lurk around the store just so she can bust them the next time they sneak away for hanky-panky. Stiles figures that getting sex-terupted by a toothless octogenarian with a penchant for handing out linty sweets and poking people with knitting needles is going to give them limp dick for at least a week. 

But, but, but, where was he. Right. Mason. Origami. Amigurumi. Nursery. Scott’s kid. Scott. Scott!

Scott hasn’t even noticed Stiles’ trip to lalaland. Instead, he’s managed to wedge two other pieces of the crib together at a precarious angle, instructions crumpled in one hand. Stiles sucks at building furniture and even he can tell that those parts should not be at a seventy degree angle. They creak alarmingly when Scott lets go of them, but somehow remain stuck together with the force of his frustration. He sighs and turns back to Stiles.

“Right? I thought animals would be nice, and Kira said it’d have to be little animals and I thought she meant insects, but she really just meant baby animals, but it turned out the insects were a pretty cool theme, apparently? I wanted to do it myself, but you remember art class, so we asked Eri and now she’s doing it and it’ll be amazing and,” Scott takes a deep breath and stares really, really hard at Step 1, which Stiles can see from here they’re past. “And I want to do this stuff myself because I won’t be here, afterwards. The practice is still too new and I’m only just getting my feet on the ground and starting to build a decent client base and I’m the only vet and I can’t take more than a couple of weeks off once the baby is born and I’m going to miss so much, Stiles, I’m just going to leave Kira all alone and not be here and it’s terrifying. I want to be there for my kid!”

He exhales, long and carefully slow and Stiles lets him because he’s known Scott since they were both four years old and he knows that sometimes, Mt. McCall just needs to erupt. Get it all out there. Alli wants comfort when she gets like this, usually consisting of Taylor Swift, booze and comfort food. Peter wants cold hard facts and a solution, the kids wand snuggles and _The Brave Little Toaster_. Lydia wants wine and worship, Erica wants a distraction. 

Scott just wants an open ear. 

So Stiles waits until he’s sure that there’s no more forthcoming, and then bumps shoulders with Scott and says, “That sucks man,” because it does and because it can’t be changed. 

As a business owner himself, Stiles knows how hard it is to take time off and he doesn’t do a job no-one else in the place can. Liam and Mason are cheap, reliable and after a few weeks of training, they’re competent. Finding a replacement vet to get more time off is probably not _quite_ that easy. 

Scott sighs, rubs his forehead. There are lines there now, mostly laugh, few frown, and Stiles is struck, not for the first time, how far they’ve moved away from those two four-year-olds. They’re thirty now and their lives haven’t revolved around each other in a decade. They see each other every Friday, but outside of that, they have to actually schedule time for each other. There’s stuff happening in Scott’s life that Stiles doesn’t know and the other way around. 

Once upon a time, Stiles would have intuited what was bugging Scott long before he figured it out himself. But then, once upon a time, they didn’t have two partners, three and a half kids and two businesses between the two of them, so there’s that. Shit, he remembers talking Scott down from a wedding panic ledge, back when the thing with Peter was just starting. A thousand years ago.

This time, Stiles is the one sighing. “I’m giving myself feels, man.”

Scott nudges him right back, laughs a little. “Yeah, me, too. Remember when we were eight and swore to each other that we’d move in together after high school and never fall in love because girls are icky?”

“We were going to have a gaming room and a pool and a pool table in the pool,” Stiles remembers. “And we were both going to be game testers and play all day long.”

“Those were the days.”

They take a moment to think that over, Stiles’ fingers automatically going to the ragged edge he left in the wood, smoothing it over, picking at it until it looks neat again. It’s Scott who finally decides, “No offense man, but I’m glad we didn’t.”

“Dude,” Stiles tries, pretending to be all offended, but the grin breaks through. Living with Scott? He’s seen enough of the man’s lack of housekeeping skills and manners during college. Also, Scott’s nasty, used towels on the bathroom floor. Yuck. Kira can have that. It’s nasty. So he cracks up, shaking his head. “Yeah. Totally. Peter’s way hotter than you.”

“Hey!” comes the offended squawk.

“Oh, shut up and build that crib, Dad.”

Immediately, Scott’s expression melts into utter sap. Stiles rolls his eyes fondly and passes his dorky best friend the funky screw from the pile. 

“Use that,” he says, decisively. “And, seriously, I think Peter might let me do the yarn bomb thing. Or, hey, maybe he’s finally realized that he’s being an asshole about the money thing and planning a grand apology. Or, or, maybe he bought me a car!”

The look Scott shoots him over the funky screw says, very plainly, that Stiles is a goddamn idiot. 

Stiles pouts. 

+


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wishlist is over, and look, I managed a thing! Warning: You might overdose on feels on this one.

+

“Okay, soldiers, living room, five minutes!” Peter hollers up the stairs as soon as he’s sure Stiles is really out of the house and not coming back for his wallet/phone/extra yarn/Allison/a pee. 

On the landing, Derek promptly peers around the corner, eyebrows raised in silent, judgmental question. Used to be, he could only do grumpy and curious with those brows. The judgmental component makes Peter unreasonably proud. No other eight-year-old can possibly stare you down with this much derision. 

“Family meeting,” he clarifies for his nephew, whose eyebrows change direction into a frown. “Stiles isn’t here.”

“Stiles is the object of this discussion and thus not yet to be included while we deal with the preliminaries.”

He watches that percolate for a full ten seconds, before Derek suddenly brightens. “Laura!” he shouts, “We’re keeping secrets!”

Thirty seconds later, all three of his growths are lined up on the living room couch, Cora in the middle, wearing nothing but a t-shirt and a diaper. Laura was changing her and apparently didn’t bother dressing her again afterwards, not now that there’s secrets to be had. 

Actually, it looks like the diaper isn’t even done up right. Peter’s about to do something about that, when Cora, scowling fiercely, slaps at her belly until she finds the sticky strip holding the diaper closed, yanks it open and fumbles it closed again in a better position, before giving a happy little butt wriggle and settling. 

There is a slight chance potty training is overdue, really. 

But not right now. Right now, Peter slaps the file he’s kept in his desk for months on the coffee table between them and says, ominously, “We need to talk about Stiles’ place in this family.”

+

Stiles splits his attention between the road and Alli in the passenger seat as he drives them toward Erica’s shop. He managed to sweet talk Mason into coming in earlier, giving him the entire day off, instead of the half day he originally thought. Yay! That means breakfast can segue right into noon-time drinking, with only the minimal interruption of his best friend breaking his hand while she gets her foot tattooed by Erica. 

Except that Something is Afoot. 

He can tell, because Alli is wearing that face. The one she only wears when Something is Afoot.

“Okay, what’s going on?” he asks as he takes a left into the city center.

“What’s going on? I’m just excited for my tattoo. Unlike you and Eri, some of us don’t get one at least once a year. It’s been over a decade since my last one!”

Which is true, but not what Stiles meant. “Nuh-uh. You have Something is Afoot face. This is part of your conspiracy with Peter, isn’t it?”

She seems to consider that for a long moment, then shrugs and admits, “Yeah. I’m still not telling you what it is, though.”

“That means the kids are in on it! I knew it!”

“No, you didn’t,” Alli calmly corrects, digging out her phone to text someone. Probably telling Peter that Stiles is onto him. Ha!

“No, I didn’t. But now I know who to use my thumbscrews on.”

“Children? Very noble of you, Stiles.”

“Don’t front. They’re demon spawn and you know it.” He can’t quite keep the goofy grin off his face. 

“True. Still.” She tucks her phone away after it gives a little ding of an incoming message. “I actually changed my mind about the tequila. In the spirit of this outing, we should have ouzo for lunch.”

Stiles cringes because ouzo does _things_ to him, okay? And he still has to turn up for Park Saturday later and being drunk while chasing a bunch of kids through the wild is not his idea of fun. Or, you know, responsible parenting. Blegh. 

“Will there be food to go with the booze?” he asks, timidly.

Magnanimously, Alli allows, “I suppose you can have some,” just as he pulls into the parking lot behind the strip mall where Erica works and she jumps out. 

Interrogation over. 

“Hey! You distracted me!”

“And you fell for it!”

+

Laura shrinks into the sofa cushions. 

Actually kind of melts into them, like she does when she ate the last cookie, or broke something, or locked her siblings into the bathroom in a fit of sisterly rage. Peter turns to Derek who… is doing the exact same thing. 

Only Cora seems unbothered, chewing on the hem of her t-shirt and mumbling about airplanes and cereal and possibly dinosaurs to herself. She’s not a fan of sentences or grammar, but her vocabulary is impressive. And filthy, but Peter expected that from day one. 

The first thing he ever said in her presence was, “Fuck, she’s adorable.”

There was really no way for things to go after that, except downhill.

He gives the older two a moment to rally, but when they stay meek and quiet and utterly unlike his kids, he asks, “Okay, what do you think you did?”

Because, to the best of his knowledge, they haven’t actually done anything for at least a week. Also, they usually confess after they screw up because they are fully aware that Peter and Stiles a) value honesty above most things and b) can’t resist those damn puppy dog eyes for longer than twelve seconds. 

Derek crosses his arms, turtles into his shirt and says stubbornly silent. Laura, on the other hand, breaks into rapid-fire babble. “We’re sorry, we thought it’d be nice and that you wouldn’t mind and Stiles deserves it and it’s stupid if we do it, but Cora’s still little and we’ve been teaching her and you don’t mind when she calls you Peter Da, so we thought it’d be fine, but if you don’t like it we can stop, just please don’t tell Stiles, we’re sorry and we can-“

“Whoa!” Peter interrupts because this doesn’t sound like ‘we accidentally flushed your cufflinks down the toilet, sorry’. This sounds more like ‘I feel guilty because I’m happy here with you, do you think Mom and Dad hate me now’ and Peter has not come prepared for that. Not that you really can prepare for your children having emotional breakdowns over their place in the world, but, you know. 

“Everything’s okay, breathe, sweetheart. Breathe, and then explain what you just said in small sentences, because I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Laura breathes. Derek un-turtles long enough to send Peter a suspicious look, as if he’s not sure this isn’t a feint. Peter raises his hands, look, no tricks. “I’m not mad. Whatever you think you did, I’m not mad, and Stiles won’t be mad, either, okay?”

And then he has an arm full of twelve-year-old, shortly slammed from the back by an eight-year-old. Cora joins a moment later, just because it looks fun, and Peter gives up, lets himself fall backwards and tries to sort out the pile of limbs just enough to avoid grievous injuries to anyone while Laura mouth-breathes into his neck. 

After a minute or two of no new outbursts, he nudges her. “You okay, sweetheart?”

She nods. 

“Someone want to explain?”

She shakes her head. 

“Derek? You up for it?”

Derek considers. Then he tells the gap between Peter’s collarbone and Laura’s shoulder, “We know you and Stiles are not our dads, but you’re still our parents and Cora doesn’t remember, so we’ve been teaching her to call you Dad, but she gets it wrong and says Peter Da and Stiles is her dad, too, but Laura said Papa is better, but Cora isn’t learning proper. Sorry.”

Peter has no idea if his nephew is apologizing for not getting Cora to say what they want her to say, or for the whole thing. He’s also trying not to start crying, just a little, but that’s not important right now. So he squeezes his eyes shut as tightly as he can, pulls the kids closer until they squeak and manages with a pretty steady voice, “Why would I ever be mad about that?”

That gets Laura out of hiding. “You’re not?”

“Of course not. I’m honored that you think of me as a parent.”

Laura is a peculiar creature. She bottles everything up until she explodes, then blows up spectacularly and recovers just as quickly. She peels her little sister off her back, sits up on her poor uncle’s stomach and says, “It’s stupid, because when I say you’re my uncle, all my friends ask about Mom and Dad and I tell them you’re our parent but they don’t get it. Derek’s, too. So we thought,” she bites her lip and shifts her bony hip into his bladder. 

“We thought about calling you Dad, and Stiles, too, but you’re not _Dad_ , you know? You’re Peter and Stiles and Dad is….”

“It felt like forgetting your dad,” Peter hazards. 

Hale #1 and Hale #2 both nod hard. “So you decided to teach Cora instead, because she doesn’t remember your parents?”

“It’s only confusing for her,” Derek offers. “She doesn’t ‘member Mom and Dad. Only you and Stiles.” That said, he digs his little face back into Peter’s collarbone and hauls Cora in by the scruff to hug her like a stuffed toy. Surprisingly, she lets him. 

“So Peter Da was your doing?”

Laura rolls her eyes. Hard. “We kept telling her, “Call Peter Dad,” and she copied it and now it’s Peter Da. I think she’s stupid.”

Peter bites back a snort. “No, kid, she’s two.”

She looks skeptic. “Derek wasn’t this stupid when he was two.”

“Hey!”

“Derek wasn’t talking at all when he was two,” Peter reminds her. There was talk about the autism spectrum for a while. But the kid didn’t show any of the other typical symptoms – played normally with toys, wasn’t averse to body or eye contact, was surprisingly emphatic for his age - so they eventually put it down to Derek being a recalcitrant little terror, and hey, they were right. 

“So she’s not stupid?” Laura actually sounds relieved. 

“She’s not stupid. Now, what was the rest of that?”

“We tried to get her to call Stiles Papa. And I thought,” she pauses again, “because he’s not really… and… you’re really not mad?”

Peter hauls her right back in. They squish the littlest bug a little, but she seems to like it, giggling as she pokes them both in the belly. Laura pokes back. 

“Stiles is part of this family. I have absolutely no problem with that, and neither will he. It’s actually already sort of an answer to what I wanted to ask you.” He tries to reach the table with his three growths, gives up and orders, “Derek, grab that, will you?”

Derek grabs, pulls, and slaps the file right onto Peter’s face. 

“Thank you,” Peter offers, dryly.

“Welcome,” Derek retorts and goes back to octopussing his sister.

+

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” goes Allison, squeezing Stiles’ hand hard in time with her almost musical squeals of pain. The window panes might be vibrating. 

At her foot, Erica cackles.

Stiles just tries not to whimper. Damn, but that woman has a grip. It can’t really hurt that much, can it? His wings sit right on top of his spine, and he didn’t break anyone’s hand when he got them. 

“Almost done outlining,” Eri pipes up when Alli pauses to take a deep breath. “Calm the fuck down, before the neighbors sharpen the pitchforks. You sound like a drunk werewolf.” She pauses, corrects some miniscule flaw in one of the lines, then asks, “Speaking off, how’s the writing going?”

“Oh god,” Stiles groans. “Now you’ve done it.”

As punishment, Alli squeezes his hand tighter. 

“Fuck!”

“Baby!”

“I want my booze now!”

“You’re not even the one getting inked!”

“No, but I am getting mauled!”

From the next cubicle over, one of Erica’s colleagues calls, “Pipe the fuck down, for fuck’s sake!”

Erica puts down her needle long enough to bang her elbow against the partition. “Shut the fuck up, Donovan!”

Then she calmly picks up her needle, dips for new ink and goes back to work, informing them nicely, “He’s a newbie and he thinks he’s god. I give him four weeks before he’s out on his ass.”

“I can hear you,” comes the angry snarl from the other side of the wall.

Before Erica can go over there and break the twerp, Alli takes a deep breath and lets out another wail to make fighting impossible. Stiles winces and quietly resigns himself to life with one hand. It’s going to make crochet tricky, but at least he’ll be alive. 

Seriously. If Alli doesn’t give him at least a _hint_ after this, he’s moving her into the garage.

+

“This,” Peter tells them, somehow managing to free one arm enough to flick open the file, “is adoption paper work.”

“For who?”

“Whom. And you three. And Stiles.”

“You’re adopting Stiles?” Derek asks, looking weirded out.

“No, nephew, I’m asking if you three want Stiles to adopt you. I’m going to-“ the rest of his sentence is lost under the delighted screeching that meets his announcement. 

He tries not to cringe away from the noise, waits until it dies down and then asks, tentatively, “I take it you’d be okay with that?”

“Yes!”

“Yeah!”

“Peter Da!”

“When, when, when?”

“Not yet.” He ignores the disappointed sighs. “First, I need to be sure you understand what the means. Then, there’s one other thing I need to ask you about.”

A pause. 

“Well, shoot.”

“Mouthy brats,” he tells them, but, “If Stiles legally adopts you, that gives him the same rights over you that I have. Like being able to sign stuff for you, make decisions for you.”

“He already does that anyway.”

Well, yes, but right now, the only reason Stiles’ signature is valid for school-related things is that Peter countersigns them. Everything else is still purely on Peter. 

“The biggest change would be that, should anything happen to me,” the reaction is instantaneous and very, very tight, “which it won’t, calm down, I wouldn’t leave you alone with Stiles, he’d go mad.”

“Mom and Dad didn’t mean to, either,” Derek mutters. Peter waits for the rest, the tears, the anger, the grief, but the boy just stays where he is, tucked up under Peter’s chin, still and silent. 

Tentatively, he goes on, “If anything should happen to me, Stiles would have custody of you. You’d stay with him. Is that… would you want that?”

The two capable of understanding what he’s telling them nod. Cora is fiddling with her diaper again. Peter decides to bull on through. “Part two, would it be alright with you if I asked Stiles to marry me?”

More happy screeching. And bouncing. On his stomach. He makes a mental note not to have emotional conversations while having what Stiles refers to as a snuggle puddle anymore. 

Once they’ve calmed down, he finishes, “Okay. Then we make a package deal out of it. All four of us, if Stiles wants us, deal?”

“Deal,” Derek beams.

“Of course he wants us! We’re awesome!” Laura adds.

“We awesome, we awesome!”

Fantastic. Now he only has to get them to shut up about it until he gets the ring and finds the time to actually, you know, propose. And hope like hell that Stiles is on board with this, because if not, he’s not only going to break Peter’s heart, but those of the kids, as well. 

+

“Come oooon, Stiles,” Alli sing-songs, trying to shove another shot into his face.

Stiles grabs it just to stop her from getting physical. And maybe also because it’s noon and they’re in a family restaurant and he doesn’t want to get kicked out. Derek really likes the food here. 

“No, thank you. Someone has to dump your drunk ass at home later and pick up the kids for an afternoon racing around the park. Which I am never doing drunk ever again.”

“Technically,” Erica comments from where she’s pouring her fifth shot, “you were hungover. And I blame Isaac because it was his birthday and we were all hungover and having a kid when you’re hungover is _hell_.”

“Which is why you’re day drinking.” Stiles points out. 

“Boyd’s headed to visit his parents for the day for some granny and gramps time. I’m free as a bird!”

Convenient.

“So you see, you should totally drink with us!” Alli argues. Stiles passes his shot to Erica, shoves his bff back into her seat and says, “I already had one, and I’m drinking a beer. Now shut up, or I’m calling you an uber and leaving you with the bill.”

“Meanie!”

She stomps her foot because she’s secretly five and immediately winces. 

Stiles isn’t above sending her a mean smirk. “Hurts, doesn’t it?”

Mournfully staring at her saran wrapped foot, Alli nods. “Yes. Did the last one hurt this much?”

“You’re just a wuss,” he points out, gleefully, because usually, he’s the one whining and she’s the one poking fun at him. He crosses his arms behind his head for maximum gloating when he notices the soccer mom at the next table giving him the stink eye. Tattoos, alcohol and noise. She probably thinks they’re demon spawn.

Which gives him an idea, actually. He pulls out his phone.

+

It takes Peter an age to calm them down enough to make them promise to keep the secret. After which they flounce off to parts unknown. Although he’s pretty sure they’re planning his wedding. 

Oh, well. 

He waits until he hears the door to Laura’s room close and then slumps backwards with a sigh, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. Jesus fuck, those kids. 

“Talia, your kids are monsters,” he tells the ceiling, eyes still closed. “Our kids. Yours and Paul’s and mine and Stiles’. Fuck. But they’re amazing. Jesus, they’re amazing.”

And then he gives himself five minutes to just lie there and fucking cry because it’s either that, or pack up and move to Alaska, where their easy acceptance and love and perseverance and goddamn brilliance can’t make him feel incredibly small and incredibly, impossibly, undeservingly lucky anymore. Peter Hale, overwhelmed by feelings.

He doesn’t even cry at funerals but these kids… these kids. 

Of course, Stiles, as always, has a radar for when Peter needs a lifeline, because his phone chimes in his pocket only a moment later. _we’re at the Greek place D likes and Im feeling vengeful. Bring the brats for lunch?_

+

Stiles grabs the waitress on her next pass, hands the bottle of ouzo back and tells her to not let them order more booze. She looks half amused, half relieved and skedaddles.

Erica growls. Alli whines. “But why?!”

“Because Peter and the kids will be here in twenty, so straighten your shit out,” he tells them, with a smirk. Because they only drink a little around any of the kids and this way, he knows they won’t get any drunker. Also, he now has an excuse to drag them both to the park, instead of driving them home first. Or, hey, maybe they can call this the day’s outing and stay at home, being lazy.

Also also, the soccer mom’s look when Stiles’ hot hunk of a man enters the place and she realizes that the degenerate, tattooed hooligan does, in fact, have a man seventeen times hotter than hers and three amazing, well-behaved, beautiful children. All while she’s stuck with her troglodyte sons smashing each other with ketchup. 

Ahhh. Life’s little pleasures. 

And maybe, in the chaos that is sure to ensue, he can get something out of one of them because damn it, he hates when Something is Afoot and he’s not in the know. 

Hates it!

Across the table, Eri stacks their shot glasses while Alli orders water. Both of them shoot him glares. He smiles back at them, beatifically, and wiggles his mauled hand in a little finger wave. 

+


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys. Guys! I forgot I had this! Guys, you have to tell me when I have stuff written and forget to post it! Guys!
> 
> (Thank you!!!!)

\+ 

A few minutes after Peter sent his ETA, Stiles decides to hell with it and takes a picture of the head of the menu and posts it into the group chat, followed by a question mark. 

Helen and Kira send back smiley faces almost immediately, Isaac texts a _30+_ , Amy a thumbs up and Boyd and Lydia pictures of their own. Boyd’s is of little Alli, posing in front of the _Welcome to Beacon Hills_ sign in her favorite tutu and his sunglasses. Erica coos loudly. Lydia’s is of a very naked, very male back in her bed, half covered by sheets and Stiles has no idea how she managed to pick up a booty call between leaving Pizza Night at eleven pm last night and now, but he applauds her skillz.

By that point, Alli is politely asking a couple a few tables away if they need their empty chairs and Erica is appropriating the empty table on the far side of soccer mom and her Forbidding Glare. 

As she drags the table over, Erica beams at Stiles. “I hate you, you know that? My one kid free day in forever, and you make me spend it with your kids instead.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Oh, please. You would have gone home and slept off the booze and been bored by four because you don’t know what to do with yourself without Boyd and Boyd Jr.”

“Don’t call my daughter Jr, Stilinski.”

“Don’t hate on my kids,” Stiles counters, sweetly, and starts moving chairs so she can dock tables, doing a headcount as he goes. Ten extra people, nine seats, Cora can lap surf because there is no way they’ll fit a booster chair in there. 

He leans over to soccer mom and her family, who’re taking up a table for six with four people. “Excuse me, hi? Do you mind if I steal your spare chairs? We’re got friends joining us.”

The husband blinks, shrugs, “Oh, yeah, sure. We don’t need ‘em.”

For a moment Stiles thinks he misjudged soccer mom and the glares were just for drinking around her kids (sort of justified), but then she offers a snide, “This is a family restaurant.”

“Yep,” he chirps, “which is why the booze went back on the shelf.” 

Her glare doesn’t lessen, so nope, it wasn’t the day drinking. Every now and then, Stiles wonders if his behavior actually exacerbates these kinds of confrontations, but shit, he has a right to go short sleeved and casual as much as anyone and it’s not like he’s harming anyone. This is the twenty-first century! Eri and Alli were drinking, sure, and they were a little loud with it, but they kept it clean and they didn’t go over the top and really, live and let live is not too much to ask for. No-one else took offense, and there’s plenty more families here. But there’s always that one person who looks at him, at Erica, at any of them, and judges. For the tattoos, the piercings, the gay couple, the biracial baby, their very existence. Who thinks they have a right to an opinion on something that has absolutely nothing to do with them, doesn’t harm them, doesn’t even look at them. 

Not just to have that opinion, but to shove it down their throats. 

And Stiles has dealt with it for so long that he’s fucking tired of it, okay? Really tried. So he just takes the chairs, gives his lip ring the most obvious tongue flick he can and turns his back on her because otherwise he’s going to start chewing her out in front of her kids and all that’d do is prove her right. 

Besides, he’s got his revenge incoming anyway. So. Deep breath. 

“I would have slugged her,” Erica calmly comments as soon as he’s back in his seat. He winks at her, because they both know she wouldn’t have. Having a kid has mellowed Erica more than she likes to admit. 

Before she can defend her besmirched honor, the front door chimes lightly as Peter herds in the miniature Hales in an orderly fashion. He drops a kiss on Stiles’ temple and a toddler on his lap before bleakly observing, “We’re not getting out of potty training anymore. She’s doctoring her own diapers now.”

Stiles winces as he automatically pulls Cora’s lopsided ponytail out and starts smoothing back her hair to redo it. She’s growing out of her curls and it’s a shame. Stiles loves those curls. 

“Is it too late to run for the hills?” he asks as Peter sits down next to him and passes Derek his backpack over the table.

Cora perks up immediately. “Run? Me run? Run, run, run?!”

“Nope, no running. You’re going to trip a waitress and then there’ll be gross sobbing and we don’t want that. Today, you lap surf, Rocket Girl.”

“I surf!” He finishes off her ponytail and she zeroes in on Erica without pause, “’Rica! Pictures!”

With a death defying leap, she jumps Erica, who catches her and readily rolls up her right shirt sleeve to bear her technicolor Mario Brothers tattoo sleeve. Cora slaps her pudgy little hands over the mushroom and the star, tickles Bowser under the chin and decisively announces, “Play!” before commencing her own version of patty cakes on Erica’s forearm. 

Meanwhile, Laura and Derek have finished their under-the-table examination of Allison’s new ink and are settling down on either side of her. Derek has his crochet stuff, as usual (Stiles is so proud), and Laura has pulled out her notebook and drawn her favorite aunt into a game of doodles. Stiles has no idea how that got started, but all the ladies, including Paige and even Lydia, are doing it now. Someone doodles something and the other adds to it, on and on and on. They’ve done whole murals of quirky comics, stories, and picures. Laura adores it. 

Derek notices Stiles watching after he’s politely ordered a water from their waitress, and holds up the square he’s working on. “It’s my fifth now!”

He’s moved on from scarves and recently discovered granny square blankets. He wanted to make a pixel blanket with a dinosaur motive and over two hundred squares. Stiles has talked him down to a sixteen-square blanket in camouflage colors to hide from the stuffed T-Rex he’s going to buy Derek for finishing the project. They’re both happy with the compromise. 

Peter orders drinks for the girls, both too engrossed in their games to notice the waitress, and something for himself before leaning back in his seat. Stiles studies him and finds…, “Are you alright?”

Peter looks wrung out. Oh, he’s hiding it, but this is how he usually looks after a ten-hour day at the office. He didn’t look like that when Stiles left him less than four hours ago and the children aren’t that difficult. 

All his question gets him is a rare, soft smile, the kind usually reserved for the two of them alone and no-one around, and a sideways hug. He leans into it, because Peter gives awesome hugs. It’s the gun show, Lydia insists. When his better half makes no move to remove him after a full minute, he hums quietly in question. Peter sighs a little, shrugs under Stiles’ head. 

“We’ve got the most amazing kids, did you know that?”

Stiles hides his grin in Peter’s shirt, but nods anyway. “Yeah. Duh.” Then he adds, “This has to do with Something being Afoot, doesn’t it?”

“It has a name now?”

“Mhm.”

“It might.”

“I’m going to figure it out.”

“Or you could just wait for me to tell you.”

“Boring.”

Peter chuckles and nudges him closer, doesn’t say anything else. Stiles, for once, lets it be and relaxes. They stay like that until the rest of the gang gets there, crowding around the table loudly and happily, bringing baby news, in Scott and Kira’s case, and a hangover in Isaac’s, and more suggestions from Finstock in Helen’s. 

Stiles has to lean around Erica and Isaac to talk to her about the offers, while Alli wrangles both Paige and Laura into playing nice, Derek shows off his work to Isaac, Kira tells Erica and Peter about her newest pregnancy pains and Scott massages his wife’s feet under the table and listens to Amy regale him with how she, Lydia and Isaac went clubbing last night after they left Helen’s place. 

Somewhere in the middle of sorting out who ordered what and where to make room for all the plates, Stiles’ gaze lands on soccer mom and her family as they’re packing up to leave. Dad is wrangling the two kids, who are loud and rude, while mom glares with a pinched look on her face at all the happy, harmless people having fun despite her disapproval.

He smiles at her. 

She looks away. 

+

Jennifer has just about finished unpacking and ordering and reordering everything twice over. It’s been almost two weeks now and even though she doesn’t have near enough furniture for a house this big yet, she was right. 

The physical echoes have gone. 

It’s the other kind that’s driving her to consider arson. 

She catches herself working out how to resort the kitchen drawers for the third time when she decides enough is enough. Julia would have kicked her in the butt twice over by now, grabbed her by the hair and dragged her outside. 

“You need a distraction before you burrow so deep in your head I’ll never see you again,” she’d have said and pulled Jennifer to the farmer’s market, or a festival, or just out for a walk, camera always at the ready to capture every beautiful thing she saw. “So what if half the time that’s you? You’re my wife. I’m allowed to obsessively take pictures of you.”

She tried to do that, early on. Go out, do what Julia would have wanted. Revisit their old haunts, find some traces of her wife’s ghost in that gnarled tree she loved, in that pond, that rusting bike chained to a fence for the past ten years. 

It felt like walking on glass. 

Still.

She starts work the week after next and she should probably start getting used to life outside this house. Just a little. Small steps. 

She changes out of her grubby housework clothes, takes a long shower, dresses in something light and makes herself a huge cup of coffee. She did brave the supermarket a few days ago, so she finds cookies stuffed into one of the cupboards after two minutes of searching. 

All the reordering has messed her up completely. Candy and other sweets are now apparently above the oven. She foresees a lot of semi-melted chocolate in her future. 

She doesn’t bother plating any, just wedges them onto the saucer next to her cup and grabs a random book off the ‘where does this go’ pile in the living room. She doesn’t have outdoor furniture yet, but there’s a built-in bench on the deck out back, and with a blanket to cover it, it’s actually comfortable. 

Early afternoon has brought the shade to it and there’s a light breeze. She sits, opens her book and starts to read while letting the coffee go cold and nibbling on the cookies. 

It’s nice. 

Reflexively, she waits for the guilt to set it. 

Before it can, though, two cars start pulling into the neighbors’ driveway. Stiles and the willowy brunette Jennifer still doesn’t know exit from one, Peter and the three kids pile out of the other. 

They don’t notice her as they head inside, laughing, teasing the woman about something that’s making her limp a little. They seem to tromp right through, because fifteen minutes later all six of them have settled in their own backyard with snacks, drinks and entertainment. The woman notices Jennifer, waves and then goes back to furiously typing on her laptop. 

A few feet away, Stiles is furiously working on a yarn project of some sort. It seems all the yarn baskets in the house are his. Peter is reading, too, while the children occupy themselves. It looks peaceful, even if the occasional, gleeful screech can get a bit loud.

Jennifer returns to her book, sips her coffee, now that the cookies are gone, and wonders whether she should microwave it, or just dump some vanilla ice-cream into it and call it intentional. 

She opts for the ice-cream, spends ten minutes looking for the scoop before giving up and using a spoon, then returns outside with her treat and a glass of water to wash down the stickiness. 

Across the non-existent fence, the cars have multiplied. There are a tall lanky guy with blonde curls and a woman with incredibly straight dark hair making their way round the side of the house. Stiles sees them first, groans and hollers, loud enough to easily be heard all the way over here, “We just got rid of you guys! What are you doing here?”

“Shut up, Stilinski,” male and curly calls back, “You wouldn’t want us stuck in our tiny apartments in this weather and we brought beer!” He holds up a six-pack for emphasis. 

“And wine,” female and straight adds, slightly less obnoxious, holding up two bottles. 

Peter meets her halfway, takes the bottles, inspects them and offers, “Good minion. I’ve raised you well.”

Jennifer puts her book in her lap. Since she can’t ignore the neighbors, she might as well watch them.

“Jerk,” the woman counters, smiling sweetly. “Anyway, we’re just the vanguard. Lydia has decided to abandon her booty call and recruited Helen. They’re raiding the stores now. Scott and Kira have gone to fetch their barbeque because apparently yours is tiny and doesn’t meet his standards?”

“And somehow, no-one thought to inform us that there is a garden party happening _in our garden_?” Peter asks. He sounds pissed. 

Stiles leans over his shoulder, unperturbed and gleefully announces, “You thought you got out of Park Saturday with lunch, didn’t you?”

“We brought the park to you,” curly guy adds, cheerfully, already engrossed in a game with the boy – Derek. He dropped the beer by his feet and dropped down next to the kid readily.

“Your friends are menaces,” Peter comments to Stiles, who points at the woman. 

“Amy’s all yours, dear. And Isaac just followed me home one night, I swear.”

“Hey!”

Laura the flummy joins the conversation to latch onto Amy and ask, “So we had Pizza Night last night and then we all had lunch and now we’re having a barbeque?”

“Yes.”

“Awesome! Come on, we’ll get chairs!”

Amy lets herself get dragged off, laughing, just as more cars start clogging up the drive and the street and Jennifer watches with something akin to dread as her neighbors’ yard fills with people. At least a dozen, with children running every which way, adults setting up extra furniture and a red-headed woman in short shorts and a skimpy top directing it all like a wartime general. 

It’s partly amusing and partly really loud and… crowded. Jennifer finishes her iced coffee quickly, grabs her book and blanket and makes to steal inside when Amy and the red-head suddenly appear at the foot of her deck stairs. 

“Hi!” Amy greets, waving cutely. She has dimples and unfairly long, darkly tanned legs.

“Hello?”

The red-head pushes forward. “Hello. I’m Lydia, this is Amy. We couldn’t help but notice that we chased you off. Sorry about that.”

Jennifer fights down a blush because she thought she was being stealthy, damn it. “It’s alright,” she defends, “I finished my coffee anyway.”

“Still, we’re obviously too loud. We can try to tone it down,” Lydia offers and then takes a very long, very uncomfortable look at Jennifer. “Or you could join us. Scott can burn water, but he makes divine steaks.”

“Sorry? No, thank you, but you don’t have to.” 

But Lydia doesn’t let it go. “Since we’re putting you out, let us feed you; meet the neighbors.”

“Technically, I’ve already met most of the people who actually live over there,” Jennifer counters. 

Amy snorts and Lydia smiles thinly. “All the more reason to come over. Don’t be shy.”

Jennifer opens her mouth to firmly but politely tell the woman to shove it, when Stiles suddenly leans out the kitchen window and calls, “Lyds, Amy, leave Jennifer alone. She can do what she wants! No annexing people!”

“You’re one to talk!” Amy retorts, jokingly. Stiles sticks his tongue out at her, winks at Jennifer and pulls back inside. He’s being kind, she realizes. Gentle. Giving her space. Because he knows – 

She can venture all the way across the yard without needing a stranger to be gentle with her. She can.

Her mouth is still open for that rejection, but suddenly what comes out instead is, “Fine. But only for half an hour. I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“You’re not,” Amy says, but Lydia nods.

“Half an hour. Come on, I’ll introduce you around.”

+


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am a terrible human being for not posting in so long, but, look. The conversation at the end of this chapter gave me an ulcer. I rewrote it three times, because somehow, it always got back to Stiles and I did not add two new character voices only to have their first conversation among themselves be a Bechdel Test Fail. No. Just. No. 
> 
> On the other hand, my frustration means that the chapter is almost twice as long as usual, so there is that. 
> 
> I hope the sloppy update rate isn't too annoying for you guys because, as always, I adore you and i wouldn't be writing without you. Thank you!

\+ 

_Dear Julia,_

_It’s been a few weeks since I wrote to you last. In my defense, moving is plenty stressful. But I’m here now. California, mild weather, all sunshine and the perfect white house on the hill we always wanted._

_And yes, I did put up the bookshelves first thing._

_The rest is pretty much finished now, though. Living room, bedroom, study for my school stuff, an actual library (!!!). There’s still three empty bedrooms, though. I might turn one of them into a workout room? Or a guest room, ~~if I knew who to invite. All our friends have run for the hills by now.~~ I guess. We’ll see. I still have about a week left before I have to go back to work. _

_I met the neighbors though, yesterday. Which is to say: you were always right and I was wrong and I do not have a gaydar. At all. You always said we never would have gotten anywhere if you hadn’t pretty much introduced yourself as ‘a super lesbian’ right away and I never believed you, but. Well. Evidence supports your claim, now. No. Gaydar._

_My neighbors are nice. Kind of loud and with three kids, but friendly. They brought me welcome cupcakes and everything. There’s Peter and his nieces and nephew, who live with him, Laura, Derek and Cora. And there’s Stiles, who’s about a decade younger than Peter by the looks of him and Allison, who is Stiles’ age and has the most gorgeous hair. It reminds me of you._

_And I just assumed, because this is suburbia and Stiles has tattoos and piercings and Peter is a lawyer, that Peter had to be dating Allison with Stiles, I don’t know. Mooching? Helping with the kids? Being a live-in friend?_

_Turns out I was 100 % wrong._

_They had a bbq the other night with a lot of beautiful, loud people and a bunch of kids and they more or less dragged me in against my will on the basis that I couldn’t file a noise complaint if I was in the thick of it. You would have laughed so hard, Jules._

_Anyway. I was wrong. It’s Peter and Stiles, with Allison as the live-in friend/nanny/moocher. Not that they see it like that. She introduced herself as the local squatter and they both immediately shot her down. Still. I have no gaydar._

_You were right and I was wrong._

_So embarrassing, even if they didn’t notice I had it wrong. Or if they did, they were used to it? I don’t know. They’re kind of intense. Stiles owns a craftstore and he gets really passionate about it. He told me if I needed any materials for class, I’d get a neighborly teaching discount, whatever that is. I tried to explain to him that high school English isn’t really all that… crafty, but he just insisted that glitter and scrapbooks made everything better, especially dead white dudes._

_(He’s a total lit nerd, btw. He has a Frankenstein quote tattooed on his arm.)_

_Apart from him, there was Lydia, who came to drag me in. She teaches college level maths and is in some kind of think tank, too. Real clever._

_Amy, also part of my kidnapping, works with Peter. Only a paralegal, she told me, which makes her mother very sad. She’s Pakistani, first generation immigrant, and she wanted her only child to be a bigshot American lawyer, or at least a doctor. But Amy spent her college days drunk and exploring her sexuality, so she didn’t quite make it. She also likes long walks, Martinis and the beach. In hindsight, I think she might have been flirting with me?_

_Isaac – oh, Isaac is interesting. He actually works a few hours a week at the school I’m starting at. He says he’s a one man career advisor, social outreach, school counsellor, anti-drug-program. He works for social services. Mostly kids from problem homes, low income, high risk. He offered to show me around campus sometime this week, if I want to. The non-official tour. Apparently, he knows all the potheads’ favorite spots?_

_Who else? Erica, the tattoo artist, Helen, the realtor, and Paige, her daughter, Scott, the vet, Kira, his wife (does something with computers?), pregnant. Erica’s boyfriend Boyd and their daughter weren’t there, but they showed me pictures._

_Scott makes excellent steaks, and there were too many different sides to try them all and wine and beer and soda and water and the funny thing was, it was all spontaneous. The way I understood it, they all had lunch together in town (I pity whatever restaurant they went to) and then separated. Half an hour later, the vast majority decided they wanted to grill out because it was a nice day and invaded Stiles’ and Peter’s place with food and drink and a barbeque. As in, Scott actually brought his because he claims Peter’s is inferior._

_There was some hefty trash talk happening whenever the kids were out of earshot._

_So they all just piled into the backyard, everyone brought something, Stiles yelled about moochers and invasions, and no-one batted an eyelash._

_Julia, I think my neighbors are insane._

_You would love them. They’re loud and bright and happy and close-knit and one could write a fifteen page paper on the social dynamics of them and you would have settled in and stayed until three am, swapping stories and salsa recipes._

_I made it an entire hour. I only promised them half of one, so I was 100% better than I thought I’d be, but after a while, it got too much. I… you know how I am with strangers. And crowds. And strange crowds._

_Stiles took pity and smuggled me out the front door and back to my own yard. He said I should come over at any time, either to talk, or to not talk. He also asked me if I had enough warm blankets around the house, which was weird, because it’s early summer in California, but then, everything about that evening was weird._

_Anyway. I went with them. I talked to them. I didn’t sit inside and watch. I… you would be proud of me, I think. I hope you are._

_I still miss you._

_Always,_

_Your Jen_

+

Allison needs a break. 

An actual one, outside this desk, this chair and this laptop. 

She’s been translating a collection of love poems from French onto English for the past two days, and poems are hard, she always gets hung up on the tiniest things because they need to be perfect, need to convey so much meaning with so few words, without ruining the imagery the original author created, or the rhythm, the intonation. All of that. In between, when she had iambic pentameter coming out her ears, she chatted with a few friends she made in Greece and she didn’t notice how it screwed her up until she texted Lydia five minutes ago.

The reply she got was, _I speak two of the three languages in your text, but it still made zero sense. Take a break, Semiramis._

It takes Alli two minutes of blank staring to figure out that 

Semiramis = Queen of Babylon;   
Babylon = language confusion;   
language confusion = take a break!

Which is literally what Lydia’s text says, and the fact that it takes Alli actual, factual _minutes_ to get the joke means it’s high time she gets out of this room. 

She’s happy for Stiles, she really is, but she misses the days when he was her wifey instead of Peter’s. Back then, she could always trust him to swoop in after twenty-four hours, maximum, and drag her out of the land of Babylonian confuzzlement. (His term. Of course it caught on.)

But Stiles has Peter now, has something – someone – else to orbit. And that’s good, because Alli has wished a time or two that she and her BBF were in any way romantically compatible, but they’re not. Stiles… Stiles likes his relationships comfortable. He likes soft things and easy things. 

His idea of love is picking the kids up from school together and falling asleep on the couch together and not minding when your significant other eats all your leftover chicken curry. 

Allison wants roses and drama, wants the manic bliss of being newly in love and the mournful grieving when it ends, wants her heart to beat out of her chest and her lungs to ache with how much she wants to kiss someone. Also, she really, really likes sex. A lot. 

It wouldn’t have been fair to either of them, if they’d ended up together. So Stiles being with Peter is a good thing, a brilliant thing and she adores the man, really. 

But she still misses her wifey. 

She stretches, groans and almost upends a plate perched precariously on the edge of her desk, next to two empty cans of Monster. None of which she remembers consuming. 

She grabs her phone. _Did u wifey me?_

_L wanted to feed you b4 school today. She made you the sandwiches._ is the instant reply. _I added the grownup drink._

_Ur kids are gonna grow up thinking caffeine is worse than booze._

_It is._

Stiles doesn’t react after that anymore, probably busy at work, and Alli ends up clearing away the plate, a lot of crumbs, and the empty cans while she wonders how she feels being wifey-d by her pseudo-niece. (featuring Stiles, yes, but.) She’s not used to anyone but Stiles mother-henning her. 

The rest of her friends are either not the type, or not in a position to, most of the time. Her mom was never that maternal and her dad. He tried. But his idea of mother-henning mostly consisted of always making sure she had her Mace when she left the house, and spare money for gas. 

She’s too tired and too muddled up to come to any conclusion, though. What she needs it to clear her head. Outside. In the sunshine. With a distraction. 

It just so happens that she knows of an excellent distraction. 

She showers quickly, changes and hops in her car to make the ten-minute drive to Cora’s daycare. 

May-Lynn, their newest employee blinks at her, surprised. “Cora’s aunt, right? Did something happen?”

“Allison Argent,” Allison supplies, familiar by now with the protocol of getting a kid not her own out of pretty much anywhere. They are tiny prisoners, kept behind bars for their own safety, and a time or two, when she was new to this, she blundered it and narrowly escaped a full cavity search and possibly cops. “And no, I just thought Cora might enjoy a trip to the playground today. Weather’s perfect for it.”

In a few weeks, it’ll be too hot to move, but for now, it’s all balmy sunshine. Perfect to be outside, especially for fair-skinned toddlers.

May-Lynn shrugs, “True. I’ll check her out for you. She was by the drawing corner, last time I saw her.”

With the, the woman flings a mane of badly dyed hair over one shoulder and disappears. 

+

Fifteen minutes later sees Cora strapped securely into her booster seat, babbling away about lions, pens and possibly spaceships. (Alli isn’t actually sure if the _Leee-ehns_ are more lions or aliens.)

She makes attentive noises as she types out a quick text to Peter and Stiles about stealing their offspring and then starts the car. There’s a nice playground in their neighborhood with a few even nicer benches. It’ll tire Cora out (which, on second thought, is an awesome idea, because it’s Date Night tonight and Alli agreed to babysit), and give Alli a chance to switch off her brain and reboot it. 

In English.

Only English.

Cora, of course, figures out their trajectory in time to deafen Alli with her screeches of, “Slide, slide!” before they get there. 

Credit where credit is due, though, Peter and Stiles, for all that they spoil those kids rotten (and yeah, the rest of them help), have certain ground rules that they’ve pretty much carved into the kids’ subconscious by now. Exhibit one: Cora waits until the exact moment the engine turns off before unbuckling herself and then sits, perfectly patient, and waits until Alli opens her door to lift her out. In fact, Alli is pretty sure the tyke doesn’t even _touch_ the door.

In Peter’s words, “Hales are an endangered species. We won’t be losing any to roadkill.”

Once Cora’s on solid ground, she takes Alli’s hand, which, how do parents do this for hours? Her back aches after just two minutes of contorted bending to hold that low, low hand. They make it to the playground without incident and then Cora gets to do her thing. 

She calls for attention every other minute or so, but beyond that, she’s content to play by herself. Which is nice, because the only other people here are a dad reading a book in the sun next to a stroller with a sleeping baby inside and a sullen teenager who’s been saddled with entertaining his twin brothers. 

Alli watches them going up and down and up and down and up and down on the slide so many times it makes her dizzy. Cora, on the other hand, has dug a hole in the sandbox and is now filling it up with other sand. Past experience says she’ll do that for hours if Alli lets her, just dig holes, fill them up, start over. 

Toddlers. What even. 

It’s peaceful, though, and Allison hasn’t thought in foreign languages for at least half an hour by the time she spots Jennifer meandering past, obviously out for a walk. Getting to know the neighborhood, maybe. 

Alli hesitates for a moment over what to do. She could let the woman pass, she could make small talk, she could invite her to sit. The first time Jennifer came over, she left Stiles in a spiral that lasted all night. The second time, Stiles told them to be gentle with the new neighbor and Stiles never, ever tells anyone to be gentle. 

He probably thinks he was subtle, but Alli has known him for more than half her life by now, and she knows what triggers Stiles and what makes him kind and at the overlap of that particular Venn diagram is always, always grief. 

Stiles attracts broken people like Lydia attracts subby douchebags and scarves attract Isaac. He just can’t leave someone hurting without at least trying to smother the pain in hugs and yarn.

(Isaac, who, scarves aside, is actually really good at psychology, especially in relation to childhood trauma, says that Stiles deals with his own scars by fixing others. Scott says Stiles didn’t become an overbearing mama bear until after Claudia Stilinski killed herself.)

And damn that boy for rubbing off on her, because before she’s made a conscious decision, she’s already flagging down the other woman.

+

Jennifer startles like a deer when Allison suddenly appears, waving at her, inviting her over to share a bench. Conversation. 

All Jennifer wanted was to get to know the neighborhood a bit better, figure out a route to her future workplace. She doesn’t like driving short distances, would rather walks. Julia’s fault, as usual. 

Still, of all the people she met at Peter and Stiles’ place, Allison was one of the least… loud. Aggressively friendly. And she can’t really pretend she hasn’t seen the other woman after standing there, staring like an idiot for a full ten seconds.

So she goes, rounding the sandbox as she crosses the playground, and ah, there’s the reason Allison is here. Cora, digging a hole while also, apparently, telling it something important. 

“Hi,” Allison greets, gives a little wave and a dimpled smile. “Sit down. How are you?”

Jennifer sits. Shrugs. “Fine. I start work on Monday, so I’m just…” she waves a hand. Awkward turtle, her father used to call her, smile on his face. Still true. 

“Good for you,” Allison counters, not letting the silence trail. “I stole Cora from daycare as an excuse to not be at home anymore.”

Jennifer wishes she had an excuse this good. Instead she grasps for any change in subject. "Someone said you work from home?”

It was probably Stiles. Stiles talks a lot. 

“Yeah. I’m a translator. I’m working on a book of poems right now, and I tend to turn into a polyglot mess when I get really into things. Hence, the break.”

“Alli look!” Cora demands, just then. 

Allison looks, nods, gives the girl a thumbs up. “Awesome hole, kiddo. Keep digging till you hit kangaroos!”

“No, bunnies!” Cora calls back.

Allison nods seriously.

Jennifer bites back a small smile. “That sounds amazing, getting to be part of the writing process.” She’s a nerd. Sue her. 

Allison shrugs, though. “Yeah, it kind of it. I’m actually trying to get my own novel published. Turns out, though, that that’s actually a lot harder than just writing a book.”

“What’s it about?” Stiles has Frankenstein on his arm. Jennifer is curious what his best friend would write about. 

Allison blushes. “Oh, nothing special. Just a fantasy story. It’s got werewolves and hunters and doomed love and all that. The agent who is considering taking me on says it’s a fit for the Young Adult section, so it’s not, like, high literature.” She laughs a little, in the way people often do when they talk about their art. It’s obvious that they love what they’re doing, but it’s also obvious that they think other people won’t share their opinion. 

Jennifer thinks it’s the saddest thing in the world, loving something and being ashamed of it. (Look at her, look at her. Just look at her.)

So she shakes her head. “No way!” she argues, instantly. “I teach high school English and let me tell you, there is nothing more malleable than a teenage mind. The books those kids read have the potential to literally shape their lives, their views and dreams, forever. The YA genre is important, because a bad book at that age can do so much harm. So don’t say your novel isn’t worth much because it’s aimed at teenagers. YA literature is important and meaningful and if the agent is considering it, I’m sure it’s worth being published.”

It’s not hard, considering her skin tone, but Allison blushes scarlet and turns her head away, gaze lowered. Jennifer is starting to wonder if she’s said something wrong by the time the other woman looks back at her, a smile on her face. “Thank you. It’s been super frustrating and I’ve exhausted all the patient ears and consolation hugs my friends had to give, so, thanks. It helps to have a virtual stranger tell me to keep going.”

That’s… not actually what Jennifer was saying, but that’s fine. Or at least she thinks so. Allison shakes her head, as if to shake off the subject, asks, “So, English, huh? Do you enjoy it? Teaching I mean?”

Jennifer shrugs. “I like that I get to show the kids how amazing words can be, and books, and writing. I don’t like that most of them only want a pass and think books are boring.”

She tries to make her lessons up to date, includes digital media, lets the kids do fun stuff, like turn books into blog posts, create facebook pages for characters, write essays on memes and Justin Bieber and whatever else is cool at the moment. It works for some of them. She tries to focus on those and not take the disinterest of the others personally. 

Allison smiles. “That’s awesome. I taught French for a while during college, as, you know, an evening class kind of thing, and I thought I might go into education for real until I slid sideways into translating. Probably a good thing, too.” She flicks her hair over one shoulder, mock haughty. “I’m not the most patient of people.”

Jennifer laughs. “I can understand that. Some days, I want to poke them. With a stick.”

“Good for you! I’d probably try to kill them. You know, I remember high school French class and god, I’d have murdered everyone there. Including myself, if I’d been the teacher. It was an elective at my school and _no-one_ took it seriously.”

“Except you?” Jennifer guesses, gets a headshake. 

“No way. My family is part French. I took it for the easy grade and coasted by on already being fluent and occasionally looking at a book from, like, ten paces. Participation? Zilch.”

Wincing, Jennifer feels retroactively bad for Allison’s teachers. The woman in question catches the sentiment. Shrugs. Grins. “Yeah. Exactly. So? Favorite book?”

Biting her lip, Jennifer offers, “Author. Hal Duncan. I… his books are complicated and full of complex layers, and so, so angry, but the language. The things that man does with language are….” She trails off, because otherwise she’d embarrass herself. (He was her formative reading in her late teens and she’ll never let go of him.)

Allison hitches up one eyebrow. “Sounds interesting. I might have to check him out. I’m more of an easy reading kind of girl, but I do like the occasional heavy hitter. The best thing about living with Stiles again is that all our books are back in one place.”

Briefly, the riptide of _shared space, shared books, shared evenings reading lazily on the couch_ threatens to pull Jennifer under. For once, she doesn’t let it, just focuses on Cora playing in the sunshine, bright and happy, banging a shovel against the ground and giggling loudly. 

“I could lend you some books, if you wanted to,” she blurts and as far as distractions go, it’s an effective one, because she just invited Allison… well not in, not to her house, but she… invited contact? Borrowing something requires contact, requires giving it back and thus more contact and they might talk about the book, afterwards and…

It’s not a horrible concept. Talking about books with a neighbor. Safe topic. Beloved books. Yes. She tests herself, lets the thought sit for a moment, finds it doesn’t hurt. Doesn’t sting. 

She turns, finally, too late to pass for a functioning human being, to Allison, finds her looking back with those big, dark eyes. They seem very kinds. 

“I’d like that,” Allison says. “I don’t get out nearly enough. Speaking off, you should come over sometimes, when you’re free, and I can show you around town a little. All the treasures are off the beaten path.”

“Oh, I… thank you. But I go back to work on Monday, so there probably won’t be much time.”

Allison shrugs. “Still a few days till then, and the offer’s open end. Whenever you feel like it. Like I said, I need to get out more. Be my excuse.” She winks, tongue between her teeth and Jennifer can see how she and Stiles are friends. They have the same… not gentleness about them, but an openness. A kindness. 

To hell with it. She nods, echoes, “I’d like that.”

+


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter you've all been waiting for...

+

Peter has a Plan. 

It is, admittedly, a rather barebones Plan, but seeing as how it involves Stiles, he knows better than to set himself up for failure by making a more detailed and thus less flexible plan.

Expect the unexpected. It’s practically Stiles’ standard disclaimer. 

So the Plan is as follows: There is a ring in Peter’s pocket and there are reservations at Stiles’ favorite restaurant. There is Alli to watch the kids and if Stiles feels like it, there is a nice, moonlit evening to take a walk in. 

He rush-ordered the ring once he found the perfect one, because he is under no illusions that the kids will be able to keep mum for longer than they stay interested in the bribes he offered them (No bedtime for a week, input in the wedding and a freaking pool in the yard. He’s a pushover. Or maybe the kids are dictators. It’s one or the other.).

He duly ignored all suggestions from Allison and the brats, including a band, a helicopter flight and a ring hidden in a bag of curly fries. Knowing Stiles, he’d swallow it instead of finding it. Alternately, a ball of yarn with a ring at the end was suggested but Stiles’ crafting patterns are far too erratic. He might use the yarn immediately, or not for a year. He’d also definitely question why the fuck Peter is giving him yarn, what with, you know, him _owning a yarn store_. 

He’s going with the classic. Dinner. Walk. Maybe he’ll go on one knee, maybe he won’t. Stiles, for all his alternative, hippie, do what you want and fuck society outlook on life, does appreciate the classics. 

It’s a good plan. 

It doesn’t even survive past phase one (shower, get dressed, settle the kids in with Alli), because Stiles comes falling in the front door at ten past six, arms flying, shouting, “Bobby just called, he’s lined up three shops to look at, Peter, help me, how do I adult?!”

Alli, sitting on the sofa, playing patty cakes with Cora, makes a noise. 

“Tonight?” Peter asks. It’s possible he can’t quite keep the whine out of his voice. 

Stiles stops on his way to falling up the stairs and gives Peter a long, slow once-over. Black jeans, blue button down that matches his eyes. Rolex. Stiles calls it his Daddy look. (“What? I may not want to tap that, but that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize that you are one sexy piece of art. Also, biceps.”)

“Date night,” he realizes, belatedly.

Peter hitches up one eyebrow. 

“We can do the showing and then go for dinner?”

Peter hitches up the other eyebrow. 

“We can do the showing and then grab take-away because it’ll be late?”

Peter purses his lips. Stiles sighs dramatically, drops his ever-present bag and wraps his arms around Peter’s neck. “Peter, my love, my light, my hot piece of ass. Will you please come with me to look at shops and help me make adult decisions because I can’t do it alone and there is no-one I trust more than you?”

He ends his little declaration with a kiss. With tongue, which he doesn’t usually like. He thinks tongues are gross. The manipulative little shit.

Peter mentally kisses The Plan goodbye, and then kisses his partner a bit more deeply than he usually would in front on an audience, because Stiles started it and Peter is not above using that. 

By the time he lets go, Stiles looks decidedly star-struck and maybe a little oxygen deprived. “I’ll… we… seven. Shower. Your car. Fifteen minutes, kay, bye.”

And he’s gone. A moment later, the shower turns on in the master bathroom and Peter turns to look at Allison with a scowl. Really, she should just laugh already. All that wheezing she’s doing has to be painful. 

+

Peter’s first impression of Bobby Finstock, realtor extraordinaire, is that he really has a lot of hair for a balding man. And also that he has even less tact than Stiles. 

He shakes Peter’s hand after greeting Stiles with a chipper, “What’s up, Bilinski?”

“Peter Hale,” Peter introduces himself, because he was raised with manners.

“Call me Bobby. You’re too young to be his father. Uncle?”

Stiles chortles. Peter frees his hand to point it at Stiles and then at himself, providing a curt, “Thirty, thirty-nine.”

The fact that they are now in the same decade, age-wise, actually helped Stiles over the fact that he is now _thirty_ , “I’m ancient, Peter, what are you doing with my old, saggy ass, oh my god?!”

Bobby nods wisely, not moving a muscle to apologize for his faux pas. Stiles watches them like he’s enjoying this. 

“Ah. Sugar baby then. Got it.” The man actually makes finger guns, fires them at Peter, rotates his hips once and then winks. 

Stiles finally deigns to save Peter, or rather, save Bobby from Peter, by attaching himself to his arm like a koala and politely asking the realtor, “So, this is the place?”

“What? Ah, yes. I’ll have you know, I spent hours digging through paperwork to find this place. Hours! You better appreciate the work I put into this, kid!”

“Better yet,” Stiles counters, “I’ll pay you.”

Bobby laughs. It sounds a little like a seal barking, only there is more wheezing. Derek has been mainlining the Discovery Channel for the past week. Peter can’t help it. And to think, he could be eating steak and proposing to his partner right now. 

Once he’s done scarring Peter for life, the man pulls out a fistful of keys, finagles the right one and unlocks the right one to unlock the glass door of object number one. It has two large windows on either side of the door, which Stiles is eyeing critically, neck craned. 

“Windows are good, right?”

He makes a derisive noise. “They’re too shallow for a proper display. Let’s see the inside first.”

+

Stiles doesn’t like the façade of #1 very much, but the inside looks good. It’s half again as large as _Yarnsome_ , boxy, with lots of open space. No weird corners. The windows aren’t really fitting for a deep display, but Stiles figures that could probably be changed. There’s a small office and a half bathroom attached.

“Storage?” Peter asks, before Stiles can.

Bobby nods, holds up one finger and leads them through the office, out a back door, through a narrow alley, into a basement. It’s big, but also, “So you’re saying that every time we need something from the back, we’d have to march through the office, outside, downstairs and then all the way back?” 

A nod. 

“My customers are going to die of old age. Inside my store.” 

Bobby nods sagely, then names a price. Stiles pauses, calculates. Calculates again. Thinks it over.

“No, Stiles,” Peter interrupts. “You’re not buying a place that you know is going to be a huge compromise just because it’s dirt cheap. The wiring needs a complete overhaul, you don’t have a kitchen, the space isn’t that much more, the windows are wrong and you hate the storage.”

“But the location,” Stiles starts, because this place is actually smack in the middle of the town’s tiny historic district. Which probably explains the weird storage, but, whatever. He’d be close to campus, within reach of his older demographic and _also get all the tourists_. 

“Yarn addicts travel, too! The tourists, Peter! The tourists!”

“On rainy days, you’d sell wet merchandise.”

“We’re in California!”

Peter sighs, rubs his forehead and smacks at one of Stiles’ flailing hands when it comes too close to clipping his ear. “Look at the others first. You have time. And you have money.”

Bobby, who’s been watching their interaction silently, starts leading the way back out the front, locking everything up. Once that’s done, he turns to them with a critical gaze. “I see it now. It’s not just sex, is it? You’re in an actual relationship with your Sugar Daddy.”

Before Peter can attempt to murder the man for being a tactless, albeit hilarious, asshole, Stiles puts on his best stern parent face and scolds, “I’ll be telling Helen about this!”

Because he has embraced that dealing with Bobby Finstock is a really bad sketch, or something really close to it. Bobby immediately braces and… is he clenching his butt? “Sorry! I’ll keep my comments on your depraved sex lives to myself! Texting you the next address! See you there!”

And he’s gone, muttering about uptight people not taking a joke. 

Stiles turns to look at his boyfriend and finds him looking half scandalized, half blindsided. 

“I told you he’s like a freaking hurricane of weird,” Stiles defends. 

“You failed to mention he’s certifiable,” Peter counters. He sounds almost in awe.

“Pretty sure I did. You just thought I was exaggerating,” Stiles defends, then tows him to the car as the address comes through. “Oh, hey, this is only a few blocks from here. Still inside the historic district!”

They drive despite the short distance so they have the car with them for the third viewing and Stiles immediately realizes the first con of #2. Parking. 

By the time they find a spot – despite it being after eight already – Bobby’s waiting by the door, right key in hand. “What took you so long?!”

Stiles ignores him to look at the building. It’s on a corner, giving it three full sized windows. Lots of light, lots of display space. The door looks awful, plastered with badly removed stickers, flyers and all kinds of tape, but that’s a cheap fix. He thinks. Probably. 

(He might be utterly and completely unprepared for this.)

There are two steps just inside the door, leading up. Tripping hazard. Hardwood floors. Nice. 

Bobby starts rattling off numbers. Twice the space Stiles has now, office slash break room, half bathroom, storage room through the break room and a partial basement. Wiring renewed three years ago, plumbing original, meaning turn-of-the-century.

The layout is a little weird because the whole place kind of wraps around the other rooms at the center, leaving it long and narrow in places. Too narrow for more than one freestanding shelf. He’d have to put almost everything up against the walls but – 

Stiles makes a little dolphin noise as he turns a corner and finds, “Ohmigawd, Peter, there is a balcony!” He pauses. “Or is that a mezzanine? Balcony? Mezzanine? I don’t care! I love it!”

It’s wrought iron with a spiral staircase in one corner, sitting snug up against the end of the long, narrow floor space and it’s just big enough for a couch, two chairs and a side-table with refreshments. 

Peter, reading his thoughts, asks, “Can your stich’n’bitch get up there? I know at least two of the ladies have fake hips.”

Stiles is momentarily thrown out of his awe by that, turns to face Peter. Who apparently actually listens to Stiles’ rambling, even when it’s about shit he absolutely does not care about, like Stiles’ regulars’ hip surgeries. “I love you,” he breathes. 

“I know,” Peter counters, because he’s nerdy and also a dick. Stiles might have hearts in his eyes. “Focus, Stiles. Fake hips.”

Right. That. There is no way in hell Mable can get up that narrow, rickety staircase. Also, now that he’s thinking about it, his toddler craft class is going to be a nightmare up there. “I could set up an additional couch downstairs? Look at it, Peter! Look!”

“Yes, dear, it’s very shiny.”

“It’s a rental with a to-buy option,” Bobby pipes up. “You buy the place, there’s nothing keeping you from knocking out the spiral and putting in a straight staircase. Make it extra broad, add shelving against the wall for extra space, no more hazardous stairs and extra shelving to boot!” He makes jazz hands.

Stiles gives him a surprised look. 

“What? This is actually my profession, kid. I’m good at this shit. Otherwise I’d have been run out of business for my charm and wit years ago.”

True. 

“Still, that leaves the weird, twisty layout. It’s really crammed in places.”

Bobby shrugs, rattles his keys. “I saved the best for last?”

+

#3 is outside the historical zone. It’s roughly on the same radius as the current store, but on the other side of town. Farther from campus. Closer to the residential areas. 

It’s got the classic two windows, door in the middle set-up.

Bobby ushers them in with the disclaimer, “It used to be a high end boutique, so the floorplan is fucking weird.”

The floorplan is fucking awesome. It has the usual backrooms tucked into one corner of the building, leaving the rest of the floor open. Across from the backrooms, a square of floor is actually sunken, three steps down from the rest. It’s not as gorgeous as a flipping balcony, but it’d make a sweet seating area. Which, yes, is absolutely mandatory, even though it’s a craft store. Stiles won’t have it any other way. The layout is more open, allowing for less crammed stocking. The office and storage are smaller than #2. The bathroom is bigger, which is really not that much of a selling point. The floors aren’t as nice. 

But it’s cheaper. 

Stiles chews on his lip ring until Peter makes him stop, looking around and listening, with one ear, as Peter quizzes Bobby on wiring, water, all kinds of permits, etcetera. Bringing a lawyer along to this was the best idea Stiles had in a while. 

Well, that, and the fact that Peter has bought real estate before. That probably helps, too.

Eventually, Stiles trundles back to the other two men, asking, “Are there other options?”

Headshake. “Nothing. Right now, these three are the only ones on the market that fit your criteria. If none of them do it for you, you’ve got to wait until something else pops up.”

Aaaaand he’s chewing on the lip ring again. _Yarnsome_ is exploding at the seams. Stiles figures he has maybe six months before he starts losing customers because it’s too crammed and he can’t keep up his customer service standards anymore. He’s already noticed a few walk-ins put off by the crowded atmosphere. He doesn’t want that. 

Peter slings an arm around his waist and asks, “Are any of these three in immediate danger of being snatched up?”

“No. If that changes, I’ll let you know.”

“Can we get the information on them to take home?”

“Sure. It’s all in the car.”

“Stiles?”

“Mhm?”

“Spit out the metal. Number one is not an option, two and three are?”

“Yeah?”

Peter nods to Bobby, who goes to fetch the paperwork for them to look over. Stiles waits until he’s outside before burying his face in Peter’s shirt. “This is hard.”

“I know.”

“What if I choose wrong and my business tanks because of it.”

Peter snorts. “As if you’d let that happen. My tiny spies tell me your customers are rabidly loyal. They’ll come with you, even if you decide to start selling from a repurposed food truck.”

Stiles pauses.

“Stiles, no.”

“But it’d be totally cool! And novel!”

“You are not repurposing a food truck. The goal is more space, not less.”

“Damn you and your adult and responsible ways.”

“Fuck you, too,” is the answer he gets to that, entirely without heat. 

Then Bobby returns with two folders for them, his name and contact information stamped across the front of each. “Take it home. Look at it. Call me. I’ll keep a look-out for now. Good?”

“Fine,” Stiles says, “thank you for your work so far and thanks for squeezing in the late showing.”

“My job, kid, my job. Besides, it’s not like I have anything waiting for me at home.” 

Well, if that’s not a hint. “Patience, Bobby,” Stiles consoles. “Patience. Just be nice to Helen. Flirt a little. Try not to make dirty jokes.”

Bobby nods very seriously.

“Excellent.”

+

An hour later, Stiles is so engrossed in the information Bobby gave them about the two properties that Peter has to remind him to eat every other minute. 

He’s taking it so far as to actually eat his burger with cutlery instead of his fingers, just so he’ll have his hands free to flip through the papers. In over two years, Peter has never seen Stiles eat _anything_ that is considered socially acceptable finger food with cutlery. He picks a fight with Lydia over needing knife and fork for Pizza Night almost weekly. 

Her defense – that her manicure is expensive and her nails are too long – falls on deaf ears. “It’s pizza, Lydia. Pizza!”

And yet, here he is. _Cutting his burger._

Peter might as well not be here at all. Still, he gets it, Stiles is clearly in love with parts of both stores, and his big, over-thinking brain has kicked into overdrive. 

So much for date night, though. It’s a good thing The Plan was as loose as it was and didn’t take more than one quick call to the restaurant to cancel their reservation. 

Some other time, he tells himself, as he gently nudges Stiles’ right arm. The one with a forkful of burger patty attached to it. Stiles sticks it in his mouth, chews, swallows. 

Then he blinks. 

“How long have you been doing that?” 

Peter gives the mostly empty plates between them a meaningful look.

“Aww, crap. I’m sorry. I’m terrible. You know how I get. But I’m still super, duper grateful you came along because you know what questions to ask and I never would have gotten half of those. Sorry I ruined date night and thank you for being amazing anyway.”

He grins, and it’s not the usual manic grin, but the naked, pure one he only gets when he’s absolutely delighted and can’t hold it in. 

Peter smiles back, because what else is he supposed to do?

Stiles leans back in his chair. “Tell me about your day, dear. Did you have fun at the office? Make anyone cry?”

 _Yeah_ , Peter thinks, as he launches in this week’s rendition of ‘Amy convinced another intern that I am the devil and now they squeak when I enter a room’, _some other time_. 

+

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...is not this one.
> 
> (I'm having an evil streak, can you tell?)


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, work is insane and I caught the Cold From Hell and got distracted by that other series I somehow started and stuff. 
> 
> As ever, your comments gave me life and I adore all of you, even if I haven't gotten around to answering, yet. Sorry again.
> 
> Enjoy your filler chapter with, like, 68% dialogue.

\+ 

Allison is going to _explode_. 

Literally blow up into a thousand, thousand tiny, disgusting bits out of sheer fucking _hilarity _and also the need to _tell_.__

__She blames Peter, who came back around midnight with a mostly sleeping Stiles hanging off his arm and such a hangdog expression on his face that she had to bite one of their fancy throw pillows to keep from waking her bestie._ _

__He looked utterly _defeated_ but at the same time so ridiculously _in love_ and _fond_ and she knows _exactly_ what Stiles did to put that look there, because sometimes that’s the only way you can react to Stiles. Well, other than murdering him out of sheer fucking frustration. _ _

__“No dice, huh?” she finally managed, with her face even mostly straight._ _

__“Another time,” Peter consoled. Himself more than her._ _

__“The showing?”_ _

__“Went well enough to catapult him straight into obsessive planning mode. I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it. In detail.”_ _

__Stiles, at that point, roused long enough to argue, “Details ‘r ‘mportant.” Then he blearily blinked at them and asked, “Why aren’t we in bed? I’ma give you a handjob. You were soooo good today.”_ _

__At which point Alli dug her teeth into the pillow again and tried shallow breaths._ _

__Now, not even twelve hours later, she’s about to fucking combust because she promised Peter she wouldn’t tell anyone, but godfuckingdamn if she doesn’t get it out, she’s going to legit _die_. She almost forgets to clean her tattoo because she’s so close to going nuclear; Erica would murder her. Which again, would end with her death. Which is bad. (She sounds like Stiles.)_ _

__So she does the only logical thing._ _

__She waits until the house is empty, hikes across to the adjoining yard and almost scares the bejesus out of their new and innocent neighbor by knocking on her veranda door at nine in the morning._ _

__Jennifer does what looks like a mildly painful spit-take with her coffee, coughs a few times and then opens the door with a raspy, “Allison? What’s wrong?”_ _

__Which is roughly when Alli remembers that Jennifer not being a Cult member is good, because that means she can blab to her, but also that the woman is not inured to people randomly popping up in her grill just because they feel like it._ _

__Alli blushes scarlet. “Oh my god, I am so sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you! I’m just so excited about something and Peter made me swear an oath of silence but I have to tell _someone_ or-,” she’s reduced to Stilesisms by making an exploding motion with her hands. _ _

__Jennifer blinks at her in that slow, careful way people do when they’re wondering if they’re supposed to call the cops now, or wait until an actual crime has been committed by the crazy person in front of them._ _

__Then, unexpectedly, she asks, “And you thought of me?”_ _

__“Well, yeah? We had a nice talk the other day and literally everyone else I know I’m forbidden from talking to, except the kids, but Laura and Derek are great, don’t get me wrong, but not exactly… the people I want to gossip with?”_ _

__Jennifer takes a moment to take that all in. Alli is starting to think that the reaction to her sneak attack is only compounded by the other woman simply not being a morning person._ _

__Then a small, honest smile flits across her features and she steps out of the doorway. “Would you like some coffee?”_ _

__“Can I spill my guts while I drink it?”_ _

__This time, she gets an entire laugh. “Yes, you can.”_ _

__+_ _

__Half an hour later, Jennifer is wiping tears from her eyes from laughing so hard at Alli’s description of Peter’s Helpless Idiot In Love and Stiles’ matching Clueless Idiot In Love._ _

__“Seriously, that man is scarily clever. I have seen him take intuitive leaps that left Lydia, a certified genius, gaping like a peasant. He should have figured out that Peter’s trying to propose by now. It’s like a freaking comedy of errors, I swear!”_ _

__“Julia took five tries,” Jennifer offers, then freezes, her third cup of coffee cradled in her hands._ _

__Alli, sensing that there is something she doesn’t know, curbs her laughter. Waits._ _

__After a long moment, Jennifer seems to have felt out whatever just happened, because tentatively, slower than before, she continues. “Things just kept going wrong. She had to work overtime, our picnic got rained out, that sort of thing. In the end, she just marched up to me, shoved the ring at me and told me to put it on. I did, because I was just as clueless as Stiles. Then I asked her what it was for, because it wasn’t our anniversary, and she kissed me and said, ‘Well, it’d look weird for my fiancée to not have a ring, right?’ And that was it. I never even said yes, not out loud, until the day we got married.”_ _

__She pauses again. “I haven’t thought about that in so long.”_ _

__Alli bites her lip. Where’s Stiles when you need him? Because she is not good at this. Her way of dealing with grief involves hurting people and shooting shit until she runs out of ammo. Still. “How… is it okay to ask how it happened?”_ _

__Jennifer nods, ripped out of some memory. “Car accident. A year ago.”_ _

__“That’s how I lost my mom and aunt and grandfather. All in the same car, all on the same day.”_ _

__“How old were you?”_ _

__“Seventeen.” And because this is quickly turning from hilarity into morbidity, she tries to jerk it around. “How long were you married?”_ _

__“Six years.” Again, a pause. “They were good years.”_ _

__“But not enough.” It’s never enough. Alli knows. Her mom’s been dead twelve years and there are still things she wants to ask her. Still things she wishes Kate were here for. Her aunt would have loved to take Alli and Stiles for their first tattoos. Hell, she promised to get Allison her first legal drink at twenty-one way back when Alli still thought alcohol was gross._ _

__“No.”_ _

__They sip their coffee quietly. “Do you… only if you want to, but… tell me about the failed proposals? I think I might need to practice my sympathetic face.”_ _

__A chuckle. A little watery, but it’s there. Maybe, Alli thinks as Jennifer haltingly starts telling her about the shellfish allergy she never knew about until it ruined attempt number three, she’s not too bad at this grief thing after all._ _

__+_ _

__“Help me,” Stiles demands as he blows into Erica’s studio, lunch one hand, real estate folders clutched in the other._ _

__“What’s in the bag?” Erica asks instead, unimpressed. She doesn’t even look up from where she’s putting the finishing touches on a conch piercing._ _

__“Couscous salad and wraps,” Stiles dutifully answers and then shuts his mouth until she’s done rattling off her _salt water, Q-tip, twice-a-day, don’t twist it, that’s thirty bucks, don’t fucking touch it_ spiel._ _

__The customer leaves, hand already hovering close to his ear. He’s definitely going to touch it as soon as he’s out of sight. Stiles wishes him a happy infection._ _

__Erica sprays down the piercing station, tosses her gloves and then makes grabby hands for the food. Once she’s inspected it in detail, she grabs two cokes from the back and settles into the waiting area, inches away from the _no food or drink beyond this point_ sign. _ _

__“You may speak,” she finally deigns to permit._ _

__Stiles saves one of the wraps from her greedy fingers, drops down next to her and shoves the folders onto her lap. “I can’t choose.”_ _

__She gives him a sideways look immediately. “Is this like the time you spent three weeks waffling over whether to paint the back wall at the store red or blue and in the end went with grey?”_ _

__He bites into his wrap vengefully, chews, swallows and taps the folders. “No. This is about me having to decide which, if any, of these properties is worth spending several hundred thousands of dollars on. They’re the only ones on the market right now, and waiting is a gamble. Peter exhausted his sympathetic face last night, Alli is acting like a chipmunk on crack, for some reason, and you’re the only other person I know who’ll give it to me straight.” He grimaces at his own word choice, then adds, “Apart from Lyds, but she’d also rip me a new one on principle, so here I am. Tada!”_ _

__He watches her try to figure out whether she’s insulted or flattered and then settle on flattered. Barely._ _

__She flips open the dossiers, places them next to each other and reads the details, flips through the pictures._ _

__“Gut feeling?”_ _

__“I love the balcony. I want to marry it and have its babies.”_ _

__“But?”_ _

__“But the rest of the layout is shit and I’d have to switch out the staircase to make it more accessible.”_ _

__“What’s your priority?” She demands, picking through her salad for an escaped cherry tomato._ _

__“Space,” he sighs, like she probably already knew he would. Erica is good at these kinds of things. At leading people to the conclusion they know they need to get to with gentle bullying and ruthless sarcasm. It’s why he’s here._ _

__“Well, that’s that, isn’t it?”_ _

__“But the other one has cons, too.”_ _

__“Such as?”_ _

__“Location,” he promptly points out._ _

__She snorts. “I saw the address. Minor problem. Also, closer to your place. You’d have less than half the commute because you don’t have to cross most of town. Hell, you could bike there.”_ _

__They both know he won’t, because Stiles is nowhere near coordinated enough to ride a bike in traffic, but. Whatever._ _

__“It’s more expensive.”_ _

__“You don’t have to remodel the stairs, though. And really, with that many zeroes, a few grand more or less don’t make a difference. How are you paying for this anyway?”_ _

__He shrugs, licks bits of stray sauce off one hand. “I have about half of what I need saved. The bank’s giving me a loan for the rest, I already talked to them.”_ _

__“Peter isn’t helping?” Because Peter could buy either place in cash and not flinch. Stiles nabbed himself a rich guy._ _

__“I’m not letting him,” he corrects._ _

__“Pride,” Erica points out, stabbing her plastic fork at him._ _

__“Probably.”_ _

__“Waiting is an option, right? If you’re not really feeling either of them, keep looking.”_ _

__“Nah. I like both. It’s not love at first sight, but they’re both nice. And I want to do this now. I have to. For myself and for the store. We can’t take more business the way we are now.”_ _

__She hums in acknowledgement and goes back to studying the pictures. Stiles alternately watches her and checks out the art on the walls. Most of the artists working here do other mediums, too, and he’s pretty sure the watercolor landscape above the counter is a Reyes original. He likes it._ _

__“You know,” she offers after a few minutes of silence, sipping her coke, “my man, the carpenter, you know the one,” she winks as Stiles rolls his eyes, “could probably add a sort of catwalk above the sunken area, here? I wouldn’t be your beloved balcony, but you’d have that multiple stories look and extra storage. And it’d make the seating really cozy, sort of like a den. You are going to put the seating down there, right?”_ _

__He grins, because of course he is, and then considers what Erica’s saying. “Like, along those two walls, with a corner?”_ _

__“Yep. Stairs here and here. Enough space for shelving on the walls. Bookshelves maybe, those aren’t as deep. Boyd could probably rig a few storage options on the underside, give you a place for all the crap you keep for your classes?”_ _

__Stiles closes his eyes._ _

__Imagines it._ _

__Throws himself bodily on top of Erica, almost sending her coke flying to reel her in and press a sloppy kiss to her lips. Which is something they haven’t done since they were sixteen, but needs must._ _

__“You are a genius, I adore you, if you didn’t have Boyd and I didn’t have Peter, I’d do indecent things to you for that idea. Goddamn!”_ _

__She smacks him, which, okay, he deserves. Then she shoves him to the floor. Which hurts._ _

__Then, once he’s managed to squirm onto his back, she leans over the edge of the sofa and grins down at him, ten-thousand watts. “I know. Let me do a mural for it.”_ _

__He squints. “Will it involve nudity?”_ _

__“I was thinking needle wielding amazon riding a crocheted unicorn? Hot pink.”_ _

__“Yarn lasso?”_ _

__“Absolutely.”_ _

__Stiles sticks his hand out. She shakes it. “Ms. Reyes, it’s a pleasure doing business with you. Now let me up, I need to text Peter. And Bobby. And everyone else I know.”_ _

__+_ _


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
> 
> And now, for the chapter, in which I advance a relationship plot, but probably not the one you want.... 
> 
> Also, is anyone here artistically inclined? Because you people have demanded and now I kind of crave it , too: the mural. The yarn lasso swinging amazon riding a hot pink crochet unicorn mural. Anyone? Please? I'll pay you in a ficlet of your choosing in this verse.

+

Peter hates having to work on a Saturday. 

Not least of all because his paralegal is a whiny baby about it. 

“It makes me want to do stabby things,” Amy complains as she drops a stack of files on his desk, pouting. “Especially for this douche nozzle. It’s sunny outside, bossman! Sunny!”

Peter rolls his eyes. “Seeing as how we live in California, I’m not all that surprised.”

“Stabby things!” she intones again and he regrets ever letting her see past the Evil Lawyer Façade TM because life was easier when he was her boss and only her boss and could order her to shut the hell up. 

It’s not like he wants to be here either, doing legwork that’s beneath both of them, for the appeal for the homophobic plague on humanity he’s forced to represent due to fucking politics. 

Peter has never wanted to throw a case as badly in his entire career. Stiles jokingly offered to make Peter a voodoo doll of the asshole to vent his frustrations on and Peter _actually considered it_. Amy might be on to something with her stabby things.

He glowers at the stack of files, then meets Amy’s gaze. Behind the sarcastic anger there’s actual exhaustion there. It’s been a long week and this case is getting too close for both of them. Amy is from a conservative family and Peter realized he was attracted to men at a time when the AIDS epidemic was still raging. Watching their client, listening to him rant and rave about his faggot son and how his mother ruined him, how his daughter’s probably a slut like her mother, on and on, makes them both want to murder someone. 

“Thirty more minutes,” he decides, with a small nod to himself. “Then we’re calling it quits.”

Amy actually throws herself across the table to land a damp smooch on his cheek. “You’re the best boss, boss!”

+

Which is how Peter finds himself at the park an hour later, changed into his usual weekend outfit of jeans and t-shirt, Amy still in her business casual next to him, looking for the bright patch of blankets that signals the extended Cult’s presence on any given Saturday. 

They’ve planted their flag at the edge of a small copse of trees, half in and half out of the shade, no less than eight colorful blankets spread out, overlapping in one giant, lopsided eyesore. There is a purple-orange plaid one. Peter strongly suspects Kira’s hand.

Stiles is, as usual, right at the center of everything, crocheting up a storm while having an intense conversation with Erica, Helen and Boyd. Kira is napping close by, Lydia perched by her head, reading a book. Laura is tiring Isaac and Scott with a rigged game of Frisbee that involves them running around like idiots and her cackling while Paige is teaching little Alli and Cora colors with a bunch of leftover yarn cakes, undoubtedly stolen from Stiles. That kid is too kind for her own sake. Allison is scribbling furiously in a notebook between heckling her two ex-boyfriends for losing to a pre-pubescent girl. Derek is leaning against her back, crafting with intense focus. 

Scattered all over are sandwiches, snacks, drinks, toys, phones, shoes and whatever else they brought and then randomly dropped. It’s an unholy mess, everyone tangled with everyone else and Peter hears stories at the office, about how people try to have family reunions and only half the members show up and wonders what that would be like, because all of these people saw each other only last night and here they are again, as a matter of course. 

Not showing up for Pizza Friday or Park Saturday doesn’t even occur to them. They bring work and errands and hobbies to these outings, take naps, make grocery lists and take phone calls. No-one stands on ceremony and no-one needs to free up time because whatever’s going on in their lives at any given moment, they just bring it with them, and keep dealing with it, alongside a dozen other people. 

And Peter would like to pretend that he just stumbled into this mess, that Stiles annexed the Hales and dragged them along, but there was no Park Saturday two years ago. 

That’s his tradition, a Hale tradition, kept up for the sake of the kids after Paul and Talia died and these people took it and ran with it. And maybe softness has made Peter dumb, maybe love has confounded him, but this is family, too. The children and Stiles, always, but this, too, these people, this place, right here, a bunch of blankets in the grass, talking and laughter and happy children. 

He toes off his loafers and socks, greets Erica with a toe in her ribs and gets her to give up her spot at Stiles’ shoulder so he can wrap himself around his partner, chin on shoulder and ask, “What are you plotting now?”

“Store,” Stiles offers, tugging aside the black yarn he’s working with and showing off a notepad filled with sketches of – 

“Is that a balcony?”

“More like a bridge, really. Over the sunken area in the corner? It was Eri’ idea and Boyd thinks he can do it, so we’re plotting now. Helen knows all about zoning and that crap. What do you think?”

He’s been rambling about it since he finally settled on which place to buy a few days ago, but Peter couldn’t really imagine what he was talking about. The sketches help. “It reminds me of a Japanese garden.”

“Right? It’s going to look badass. And with the way the windows are placed, you’ll be able to see it from the outside. It’s bound to draw in a few curious Georges.”

“Why is the base so thick?” 

Boyd points, nods. “Extra storage. I can put drawers into the flooring. Big enough for small stock items, like hooks and needles and maybe embroidery floss, or to stash projects and the class materials. Either.”

“What colors are you thinking?”

Stiles grins, “I want it to match the floors. And the mural.”

“What mural?”

And that’s Erica’s cue, because she shoves another pad with a far more colorful sketch under Peter’s nose while Helen dryly explains, “Why, the unicorn riding amazon mural, of course.”

It says something about how inured Peter has become to these people that he only tilts his head, squints and asks, “Is that unicorn made of yarn?”

Erica gives a frustrated huff. “I can’t make the stitches look right. Drawing crochet is actually hard, who knew?”

“You’re better at drawing it than making it,” Boyd consoles. He sounds so deadpan and factual that it takes Erica a full five seconds to realize she’s been insulted. Then she gives a mighty war cry, flings her sketches at Helen, who almost gets brained by them, and lunges for her lover.

Peter and Stiles duck. Helen scowls at the two fully grown adults wrestling right next to her. “Children,” she judges, on a sigh. 

A few feet away, little Alli has noticed her parents playing and decided to join in. She echoes her mother’s war cry startlingly well and jumps. Cora, of course, is only a second behind her. 

Paige’s expression as color-learning hour is abandoned without a thought, matches her mother’s down to a T.

Derek, watching everything, sticks out the empty thread spool he was working with in the direction of his BFF. “Do you want to help me?”

Peter squints at it across the distance of a couple of blankets. “What are you even making?”

He’s seen the wooden spool with the nails driven into the top around before, but never in use. Apparently, it makes long ropes of yarn. Incidentally the same black yarn Stiles is working with. 

“Legs,” Derek supplies as he passes Paige his sole knitting needles and shows her what to do. 

Stiles holds up his own project. “We’re making a Spider for Baby McCall’s nursery. I’m doing the body, Derek’s making the legs. We’ll stick wire in them later, so they’re adjustable.”

“And rhinestones!” Scott calls as he passes by, Frisbee in hand. 

“And rhinestones,” Stiles agrees, complacently. Then pauses. “Eri?”

From under a pile of limbs, slightly wheezy, “Yeah?”

“Think we can stick rhinestones on the amazon’s armor?”

+

Allison startles only momentarily as Amy drops down next to her, business skirt hitched up around her hips. It’s going to take a professional to get those wrinkles out, but the other woman doesn’t seem to care.

She watches Alli scribble for a few minutes, listening to the chaos going on around them, helps heckle Scott and Isaac. 

Then, her eyes fixed on where Peter is curled around Stiles, dopey expression on his face as he listens to a debate about… rhinestones, amazons, spiders and the importance of the color pink…what?... she asks, “He’s never going to manage to propose, is he?”

Alli fights down a reflexive denial and calmly asks, “What makes you think he’s trying to?”

The look she gets is dry enough to catch fire. “Stiles has been texting me increasingly idiotic questions concerning Something Being Afoot. His last idea involves Peter wanting to surprise him with a gay couple’s cruise.”

Alli snorts. “Maybe for the honeymoon.”

“If Peter ever gets around to it.” They both crane their necks to watch the man in question for a minute. Peter looks both hangdog and absolutely charmed. As ever. At a guess, he doesn’t want to take away from Stiles’ plotting the new store by making the day about a marriage proposal. Which is a bit stupid, because there are always five things going on at once around Stiles and there will never be an ideal moment. 

“How does Stiles not know, though?” Amy demands, sounding completely confused. “Peter is not subtle.”

Allison shrugs, closing her notebook on her pen. “Somewhere under all the sass and the ink there is a crippling lack of self-esteem. It doesn’t occur to him that someone could truly want him. Not for forever.”

Amy blinks, obviously startled. “Stiles? Our Stiles?”

Alli bites back a smile. Amy has assimilated far too well. But she wasn’t there when they were teenagers, didn’t meet high school Stiles. Hasn’t heard Scott’s and Lydia’s tales of the tiny, broken boy with a hole where his mother used to be and an open wound where his father should have been. She didn’t see Stiles spiral after he broke up with Lydia and resigned himself to dying alone. When he thought he was unlovable and wrong and too much for anyone to bear. 

Allison isn’t going to be the one to explain it to her. She just pats her friend’s hand and offers, “They’ll figure it out. Somehow.”

God knows, they somehow manage to fake being functional adults in all other areas of life, including childrearing and business. They’ll get the romance parts sorted out as well, eventually. And if not, well, Alli has two years of practice by now, at pushing Stiles to have necessary epiphanies concerning his feelings for Peter. It goes all the way back to making him realize he’d all but moved in with Peter without noticing. 

Amy snorts, but willingly changes the subject. “So. I heard you’re making inroads on New Neighbor. Give me the scoop, she’s hot. Did you see the thing she does, with her legs? One crossed over the other and then twisted under? You have to be really, really bendy to do that. Really bendy. Come on, please.” She makes cow-eyes at Allison, over the top and kind of ridiculous and sometimes Amy is such a cliché lesbian that she has to be hamming it up intentionally.

Still. Oh, dear. “Please don’t?”

“What? Are you staking a claim? I thought you were straight?”

“Am,” Alli shrugs. “But Jennifer is… if you’re just looking for a booty call, don’t? I don’t think she could take it. She’s… fragile.”

Deflating immediately at the stoplight Allison is flashing her, Amy asks, “Bad breakup?”

With a grimace, Alli shrugs again. “Not exactly. She was married.”

“Divorced?”

“No.”

She lets the other woman figure out the link between ‘used to be married’, ‘didn’t get divorced’. When she does, she cringes, expression settling on something small and pitying. “Shit.”

“Yeah. I think she needs a friend a lot more than she needs romance.” Pause. “Oh god, I sound like Stiles.”

Amy pats her hand. “It was bound to happen eventually. So, no sweeping her off her feet and making her see stars?”

“At least not just for fun, I think?” Alli shrugs a third time, not actually sure. She doesn’t know Jennifer all that well after a few casual conversations. Her overall impression is just that the older woman is fragile and even if she weren’t, she definitely isn’t the type for a no-strings-attached arrangement, which she knows Amy favors. 

The woman manages to pick up a new hot chick every weekend, get herself sexed stupid and then move on without a pause. She claims she’s hoarding orgasms to get through the long, hard weeks of being the only person Peter trusts to be competent at the firm. Which, considering she has one of the most awfully mind-numbing jobs Allison can imagine, might well be true. No matter what she says, the gossip sessions with Peter can’t be worth all that… law stuff. 

Amy, having apparently coming to some kind of conclusion, nods. Then she abruptly drops backwards to lie flat on the blanket and focuses on Derek and Paige, who, yeah, actually, probably heard all that because they’re _right there_ leaning up against Alli’s back. What does it say about her, that she’s become so inured to children perching on her that she doesn’t even register it anymore?

“You two heard nothing about any of that grown-up conversation, right?” Amy asks, voice leading.

Because proposals, personal relationships of parental figures and oh, yeah, Amy’s horny talk about the new, bendy neighbor. 

Derek flush against Alli’s back, wiggles, asks, “About what?”

“Exactly! Awesome!”

Paige makes a thoughtful noise. “We might remember, though. Later, I mean.”

She gives a little giggle, but Alli is still impressed. The kids used to be all fluff. Apparently, Hale Deviousness is contagious.

Amy snorts. “Chocolate sundae and five bucks apiece.”

“Ten bucks,” Paige argues. Derek adds, “And sprinkles. And flakes.”

“You two are monsters. Ten bucks, extra sprinkles. No flakes, because I learned my lesson about sugar overdoses last time.”

“Deal.” From the shifting around going on, they’re all shaking hands now. 

When Amy sits back up, Allison elbows her in the gut. “Pushover. You could have totally gotten them for five and a cone.”

“Shut up.”

+


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Setting the scene...
> 
> (It's getting a little bit hurty, now, for a while.)
> 
> I'm sorry for the three PoV changes in one chapter, but this is actually 90% set-up for the next few chapters and needs must.

+

It’s past midnight and Jennifer can’t quite stop yawning, but she’s not ready to go to bed, yet. Getting up tomorrow morning is going to be hell, especially since she has to make it to school early to finish copying all her handouts. 

It’s been two weeks since she last wrote anything in her diary, though, and there is so much to tell. Her first day at work, which, thanks to Isaac making true on is word and giving her a tour beforehand, was a lot less harrowing than it could have been. Oh, the new colleagues and students and the eternal ‘we do it this way’ was still stressful, but she’s managed to avoid the mandatory getting lost. Plus, Laura’s raspberry cupcake recipe went over really well with her fellow teachers. It never hurts to butter people up with candy – one of the few nuggets of wisdom Jennifer has ever learned from her mother.

On her second day, Isaac actually kidnapped her for lunch, introducing her to a nice little café only a block from the school and they bitched out the more obnoxious students together until Jennifer was laughing tears. Since he works with the troubled kids, he knows all the ‘hot topics’ in the school and he isn’t shy about venting about teenage idiocy combined with bad life choices. 

(“Are you flirting with me, Isaac?”

“Is it working?”

“I’m gay.”

“Shame. I was hoping really hard for bi. Does Amy know, yet?”)

Somehow, Amy found out, because on Friday, she absconded from work early (Peter’s words) to kidnap Jennifer right from the school and take her on a sight-seeing tour of, “the most amazing three Starbucks college town in all of California, just you wait and see. The historical district is the size of a stamp, but it’s a really pretty stamp and you know college towns, watering holes all over.”

She got invited to join her neighbors for their Saturday outing, declined, and found that by the time Monday rolled around again, she’d already hit her stride, at least enough to not drown. 

Isaac, apparently, has decided that Tuesday Lunch should be a thing and it’s set just enough tongues wagging to distract everyone from how new she still is. 

It’s nice. 

Now, on Wednesday, Jennifer’s been busy almost non-stop for two weeks. She realized she hasn’t written Julia in ages over dinner and even then, she got distracted by Amy texting her about some inane thing.

So now here she is, after midnight, trying to put into words everything that happened and realizing it’s too much. She’s never gone this long without a letter to Julia. Oh, a few days here and there, but almost two full weeks? She feels… bad. Guilty. But at the same time, she’s glad. 

The letters, the diary, are her crutch. She’s fully aware that Julia neither hears nor sees what Jennifer writes her. If she’s there in spirit, she’s there all the time and if she’s not – the letters are a coping mechanism. And she thinks the fact that she flat out forgot to write them for so long might be… good?

Even if it makes her stomach feel twisty with guilt. 

_I’m sorry it’s been so long_ she writes. Pauses. Puts pen to paper again, hesitates. _but my life is suddenly filling up again_. She doesn’t write it. It seems cruel. 

Childish, yes, she knows. But cruel.

_I’ve been busy. My first day at work…_

She writes. Compresses the first week onto two pages, sips tea long since gone cold. She’s about to start in on the second week when headlights blind her through the bay window. She looks up, surprised. 

This is a residential street on a weeknight. Traffic is practically non-existent. 

And yet, there is a stuck pulling into Peter and Stiles’ drive and a moment later, two car doors slam, carelessly loud, as Scott, the vet, and his wife make a beeline for the door. 

Oh, Jennifer thinks. Oh, dear. 

+

Stiles is just drifting off into gentle slumber after two hours of wrestling Cora back into bed and back into bed and back into bed, when the doorbell rings. 

Since he’s pretty sure it’s not UPS, his heartrate instantly skyrockets. Nothing good has ever come from post-midnight house calls. 

Not ever. 

Automatically, he reaches for Peter, who is already stirring with a groggy groan. They look at each other as well as they can in the dark and then they’re both moving, rubbing sleep away hastily and pulling on t-shirts.

Stiles hits the stairs first and hurtles down while Peter gets intercepted by noises from Cora’s room on the landing. Thank god both Laura and Derek sleep like logs. 

Stiles yanks open the door, ready to give whoever a piece of mind, when he registers Scott and Kira. Who have keys. Who could have just come in. Who didn’t, but chose to ring the doorbell at midnight and, “Who died?”

He’s pretty sure he means for it to be flippant, but it comes out far too serious and Scott, Kira under his arm, a duffel slung over his free shoulder, winces. He _winces_. 

Then he takes a deep breath and opens his mouth. Kira promptly elbows him and pushes past Stiles, saying, “Sorry for the rude wake-up call. Is Peter up? We should sit down.” 

Before Stiles can even start complaining that he doesn’t feel like _sitting the fuck down_ , she pointedly digs the heels of her palms into her back and pushes out her baby bump. 

Damn her. Everyone always thinks she’s the harmless one. 

They hit the living room around the same time Peter does, face tight with worry. “She stayed down,” is all he offers, before greeting Scott and Kira quietly. 

They sit. 

Scott bites his lip. “Okay, Stiles. I need you to not freak out, okay? Everything’s going to be fine.”

Not helping. Actually, doing the opposite of helping. Stiles bites the side of his thumb hard, ignoring Peter’s attempt to intercept his hand on reflex. “Just spit it out, Scotty. What happened and to whom?”

Scott winces. Honest to god winces. _Again_. Stiles can barely breathe. He hasn’t had a panic attack in almost a decade, but he’s going to have one _right now_ if Scott doesn’t _talk_.

“Your dad is in the hospital,” he finally blurts, too fast. “He made my mom promise not to tell you, so she told me instead. He didn’t want you to worry, so you know he’s going to be fine.” 

His hand finds Peter’s, blindly, and he squeezes way too hard. “Stiles?” Peter asks, hauling him in for a hug. “Breathe.” 

Then, with Stiles securely in his arms, he asks the question Stiles can’t right now. “What happened?”

Kira grimaces as Scott answers, “He was shot.”

Stiles had this nightmare. For more than twenty years, he had this nightmare. Since he was old enough to understand what being a cop meant, right up until his father’s retirement party, he had that damn nightmare. The doorbell ringing in the middle of the night and one of his dad’s deputies on the other side with a solemn face. Sorry Stiles, they’d say, but your dad has been shot.

Scott isn’t a cop, but everything else is _exactly the same_.

“He’s retired,” he snaps. “He’s retired, why is he getting fucking _shot_? Where? How bad is it? What… what happened?”

Scott shrugs and Stiles wants to strangle him a bit. “There was a robbery, apparently? In the shoulder. Mom says he’ll be just fine.”

He’ll be fine. Stiles won’t have to bury his last remaining blood family just yet. He’ll be fine. Not another funeral. He’ll be fine. He just got shot in the shoulder, he’ll. Be. Fine. 

His hands are shaking. 

“I need to go to Beacon Hills,” he realizes. No-one around him looks surprised. 

Scott kicks at the bag he brought. “Since Alli’s doing her thing with Lyds at that conference right now, we packed a bag. We’ll stay here, get the kids up tomorrow, look after them. Bring them up if you want us to, or keep them until Friday. You two go, see John.”

There isn’t really conscious thought involved in the way Stiles throws himself at Scott to hug him tight enough to strangle. Because only a few weeks ago he thought about how little their lives still intersect, really, but here Scott is, exactly where, when and what Stiles needs him to be and shit, he loves this guy. 

And because Kira is right there with him, he hauls her in two, hugs both of them. They hug back and tactfully pretend he’s not sniffling into Scott’s hoodie.

Behind him, Peter stands. “I’ll text Amy to call in sick for me and go pack. Are you two okay to sleep in our bedroom? I can change the sheets.”

“Don’t bother,” Kira says, pulling away from the boys. “We know they’re clean.” She winks, Stiles thinks, but he can’t really see, just clings to Scott a bit longer. 

“I love you guys,” he says. It’s easier to focus on than his father being in the hospital. 

+

It takes them less than an hour to get on the road. Peter drives, because Stiles is in no mood to and he’d probably speed and get them both killed. 

One Stilinski risking his life tonight is enough. 

As he sits in the passenger seat, hands empty of anything to do, tired and stressed out, Stiles can feel the panic ebb. 

Melissa told Scott that the wound was a clean through and through, that there’ll be no permanent damage. Apparently, the former Sheriff was out for a late night snack run to the gas station and walked in on a robbery in progress. 

Bad luck.

What the hell was he doing, getting gas station junk food in the middle of the night? 

In place of the panic, an old friend is settling in, instead. Rage. The cold, hard, bitter kind of rage he hasn’t felt since he was a teenager, since, incidentally, the last time his father got shot. 

He promised. He _swore_ on Claudia Stilinski’s grave that he’d be more careful. That he wouldn’t abandon Stiles. That he would be okay. He fucking swore. 

(Just like he swore to give up the booze, to work less, to be there for his dead wife’s son.)

“Stiles,” Peter asks, quietly, worriedly. Like it’s been a few times, already. His hand finds Stiles’, clenched tight in his lap. He smooths his thumb blindly over Stiles’ knuckles and Stiles finally unclenches them enough to notice how they hurt. 

Too tight. 

“Are you alright, sweetheart?”

Stiles can only shake his head. 

“Anything I can do?”

“Keep me from slugging my old man when I see him?”

Since the road is pretty much empty and has been for the past ten miles, Stiles can’t scold Peter for looking at him. “You’re angry.”

How perceptive of him. He swallows the comment. Lashing out is not going to help. “I’m furious,” he corrects instead. 

There is a long silence. Peter, Stiles muses, has never seen him mad before. He gets cranky and shouty, but he doesn’t get _angry_. Not really. Not all the way through. Apart from Scott, Lydia and Allison, none of their group have ever really witnessed Stiles in a rage. 

After a while, Peter quietly offers, “I was furious with Talia.”

He doesn’t say when. Doesn’t have to. His hand is still rubbing circles into Stiles’ aching knuckles. 

“He promised. To be more careful. To never get shot again. And when he retired a few years ago, I was so glad I wouldn’t have to bury him. That I could stop holding my breath every time he went to work.”

And now this. 

“Children bury their parents,” Peter chides, softly, regretfully. His own parents have been dead for well over a decade. “It’s how things are supposed to be, sweet boy.”

Stiles snorts, derisively. Pulls away his hand, rubs it through his hair. “No, really?” Pauses. Tries again. “I know. But I figure, I had to bury one of my parents way too early. That means I get an extended lease on the one that’s left, you know?”

“I don’t think it works that way.”

“Watch me,” he shoots back, finding a grin, somewhere deep down. “It’s why you and me are going to live to be a hundred – so the kids don’t have to mourn two sets of parents.” He bites his lips. “This is morbid as fuck.”

He turns to look at his partner, finds him already looking, a terribly fond, convoluted expression on his face. Too much for not-quite-three in the morning. Instead of trying to parse it, he pulls out his phone, plugs it in to charge and then activates the Bluetooth setting so he can blast music from the radio at far too high a volume. 

At least the headache is going to keep them both awake.

+

“Alli? Wake up.”

“Mrmh?” Alli buries her head in her pillow and wishes the annoying person would go away. Her head is throbbing. Why is her head throbbing?

“Alli. Wake up.” That’s Lydia. She sounds cranky. Cranky Lydia is not to be disobeyed. 

She cracks one eye open. “Grhmha?”

“I need you to wake up properly. Scott just texted me. There’s trouble at home.”

Home?

Allison blinks, feels her brain boot, finally. She’s at a hotel in Frisco with Lydia, who had a conference for the past two days. Alli came as he plus one to just get out of the house and have fun. Her aching head is a wine hangover. It’s late. Early. Something. 

Trouble. At home. She squints at her friend’s face, finds her expression tight and pale. Hungover, too. But something else. Worry. 

“What happened?”

“Stiles’ father has been shot. He’ll be fine, but he tried to hide it from Stiles. Scott and Kira have the kids, Peter is taking Stiles to see his dad.”

It takes a good five seconds for all of that to sink in. John Stilinski, shot. Tried to lie. Stiles, on his way home. 

Suddenly alarmed, Allison meets Lydia’s gaze. “Fuck,” she breathes, quietly. “Stiles is going to go apeshit.”

Lydia nods, solemn. 

Shit. “I can’t drive like this.” 

“No,” Lyds agrees. “I already called down to reception. They’ll bring us up breakfast at 6. We can eat together before you leave. Today is the last day of the conference. I’ll try to leave early and see the kids. I can take them on Friday, I have the rest of the week off, anyway. Bring them down on Saturday, if Stiles and Peter want them there.” She takes a deep breath, blows a wayward curl out of her pale face. “You just keep Stiles from doing anything he’ll regret.”

Alli nods, checks her phone. Not quite five. Since she’s not getting any more sleep before the food comes, she might as well take a long, hot shower to wake her up.

God knows, she’ll need it.

+


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long. As you might know if you follow me on tumblr, I've had the plague. The next few chapters might take a bit, too, but they should come in fairly quick succession then. I just want the whole drama written out before I post and I expect it to take up 4-6 chapters before we get back on an even keel.
> 
> Hang in there and thank you for being patient and kind.
> 
> (Also, all your 'oh-oh, John's so dead' comments cracked me up. Thanks for that!)

+

Peter is worried. 

About Stiles more than about John. Oh, he likes John well enough, considering the man has spent decades unintentionally hurting the man Peter loves, has become friends of a sort with his (hopefully) future father-in-law. John is a little bit like a demo version of Stiles, under the tan wrinkles and crooked smiles. He has Stiles’ sense of humor without the caustic, diamond edge, his sharp mind without the insane capacity for lateral thinking, his kindness without the tendency toward self-sacrifice. 

Basically, he’s Stiles dialed down to socially acceptable levels instead of the constant battering hurricane in human form that Peter loves so much. 

And he’s taken Peter and his kids in stride, hasn’t once hinted toward Stiles that maybe the age difference is too much, their lives too disparate, the kids too much to take on. Wisely, Peter thinks. Stiles does not like being contradicted. 

Instead, Peter’s children call the former Sheriff Grandpa, climb all over him when he comes for his semi-regular visits and hoard the little gadgets he gifts them with away like treasure. 

So yes, Peter likes John. And yes, he worries about the man, shot and in hospital. But he, unlike Stiles, heard the part where Scott said it was a clean shot, through and through, and John was never in any mortal danger. 

Which is why he is more worried about Stiles, sitting next to him with his lips pressed in a thin line, knuckles white from clenching his fists so hard, quiet and monotone and sharp in a way Peter has never seen before. 

This, he thinks, off-handedly, trying to focus on the empty, dark road ahead, might be what Lydia once referred to as ‘forest fire Stiles’ in passing. Except that, where Peter always imagined Stiles would go incandescent with true rage (possibly influenced by Lydia’s phrasing), he is actually cold. Freezing. His words are clipped and precise, his usual careless sprawl and flail are completely absent and his eyes are hard in the dim lights of the occasional passing car. 

Somehow, some way, Stiles is completely _furious_ with his father for getting shot. So furious, in fact, that it’s almost like sitting next to a stranger. 

A stranger or, perhaps, the demon whose wings Stiles carries on his back.

+

Melissa meets them in the emergency room, hugging them both and offering, “I’m sorry I couldn’t just call you, but he made me swear and you know how he gets.”

She gives Stiles a searching look as she says it. He barely acknowledges her words, just nods them away. Her lips tighten imperceptibly. Peter feels a little bit like an outsider because Scott and his mother, the people who have known Stiles for decades, are all reading something in him that Peter can only guess at. He feels at sea. 

(But that might be the lack of sleep and the shitty gas station coffee talking. As soon as the sun comes up properly, he’s hitting up Beacon Hills’ one and only Starbucks and damn the money.)

“He’s in a room, sleeping it off. The surgery was mostly routine, checking to make sure nothing ripped, but the bullet only hit muscle. He’s all stitched up and should be able to go home in a few days.” Melissa pauses. When Stiles says nothing, she continues, “I’m thinking I’ll kidnap him to my place, make sure he actually takes it easy for a while, huh?”

Again, no reaction. Then Stiles visibly rouses himself. Asks, “Did they catch the fucker?”

“Sheriff Parrish was by an hour ago to tell us that he’s behind bars. The gas station’s surveillance is brand new and they caught the guy dead to rights. Picked him up at his own house, gun on the kitchen table, prints all over.”

There is something very sharply satisfied about the way she says it and Peter is, again, thrown by the fact that, in a few short months, this woman is going to be a grandmother. She doesn’t seem old enough. But then, she had Scott at twenty, making her fifty now. Only eleven years older than Peter. 

By the time Peter is her age, Laura will be twenty-three. Plenty old enough to have children of her own. 

Jesus Christ. Five am is the wrong time of day for him. He should _not_ be awake, much less thinking. 

Still wrangling that stray thought, he follows his partner and his partner’s pseudo-mother upstairs toward where John Stilinski lies prone in a hospital bed, one shoulder thickly padded with bandages, chest bare, eyelids fluttering. 

Melissa fusses over him for a minute as he wakes completely, blinking away exhaustion and the dregs of whatever drugs the doctors fed him. Then, with a hand scrubbed through both Stilinski men’s messy hair, she leaves the room, sending Peter a significant look he, once again, can’t parse. 

He has never dealt with this Stiles, why does nobody seem to remember that? All the drama in their joint lives so far has been Hale flavored. 

John finally seems to realize just who has come to visit him when they’re alone in the room. 

“Stiles,” he says, surprised. Slurring a little, but sharpening with every breath. “I didn’t expect you here. Mel promised not to bother you.”

“Well, she didn’t promise not to bother Scott and he didn’t promise not to bother me, so maybe make sure to make the promises you exact from people more specific in the future. Or more general. I can’t really decide.”

It’s defense-babble and Stiles cuts himself off with an angry sniff. “When were you planning on telling me you got shot?” 

Fairly reasonably, John answers, “When I could tell you myself, so I could reassure you that I’m fine.”

“You have an extra hole in your body. That is not fine.” Stiles is visibly fighting not to cross his arms over his chest. “What happened? Why were you even out at that time of night?”

Not for the first time, Peter watches them interact and thinks about how twisted up their relationship really is, son playing the role of parent, father playing the role of child and both far too used to it to even notice anymore. 

John shrugs, winces and then grimaces. “Thirty plus years of working shift, kiddo. I couldn’t sleep. So I thought I’d take a little walk, get some air, and grab a Mars on the way back.”

There is a pause as everyone waits for Stiles to comment on his father’s diet choices. He doesn’t. “And then?”

“Then I came up to the place and there was this strung-out asshole holding a gun on the cashier. The kid looked like a high schooler. I could see how terrified he was all the way out in the parking lot. I had to do something.”

“You’re not a cop anymore, dad.”

“No, but I know their response times. By the time they got there, that kid would have been shot or worse. So I went in.”

“And got shot instead.”

“I couldn’t just stand there, Stiles.” John snaps, rubbing at his face with his good hand. He looks groggy. He sounds it. 

Stiles just shakes his head. “You know,” he starts, almost conversationally. “I always knew that I wasn’t enough to make you want to stay alive, but I thought having three fucking grandchildren with hearts to break might be. Turns out I was wrong.”

With that he turns and stalks out of the room, tightly contained and silently furious, leaving Peter staring after him. He can’t begin to articulate all the things that were wrong with that sentence, beyond the furious helplessness it was delivered in. 

He glances at John, who sits, propped up by pillows, his eyes screwed shut, looking like he’s just been shot a second time.

Eventually, he opens his eyes, focuses on Peter. “I’ve broken too many promises to that boy,” he says, almost absently. “Please go after him. And when he’s calmed down, bring him back, so I can explain?”

“I…are you sure, John?” Peter is at sea here.

“My son gets vicious when he’s afraid. Just… don’t take what he says to heart. Please.”

With that, the older man closes his eyes and lets his head drop back onto the pillows. He doesn’t say another word. 

Peter goes after Stiles. 

+

Jennifer fights with herself to wait until eight before marching across the adjoining front yards and ringing the doorbell. The McCalls’ car is still in the drive. Peter’s is gone and has been since the wee hours of morning. 

It’s Kira who opens the door, bleary-eyed and massaging her back like it hurts. Since Jennifer met the smaller woman, she’s gone from ‘slightly pregnant’ to ‘walrus’, seemingly within a few weeks. From under her tight shirt, her belly button pops out.

“Morning. Can I help you?” 

Jennifer fights the urge to fidget, says, “I noticed you arrive last night and Stiles and Peter leave.”

“Oh, sorry, did we wake you?”

She shakes her head. “I wanted to ask if everything was okay?” Way to sound assertive, Jen. Really. 

Kira shoots a look back into the house, where the children are audibly fighting over breakfast, then takes a step closer to say in a low voice, “Stiles’ father is in the hospital. He was shot in a robbery gone wrong. He’ll be fine, but Stiles and Peter drove down immediately. Scott and I are here to look after the kids. And we haven’t told them about the shot part, so keep it quiet, okay?”

Shot?! 

“I’m so sorry,” Jennifer blurts, reflexively. Then cringes because she _hates_ when people do that to her, knee-jerk politeness with no intent to it. “Is there anything I can do to help? Maybe take the kids to school? It’s right next to the high school.”

She’s already tailgated Peter twice on her way to work. 

Kira smiles, honest and open. Grateful. Shakes her head. “Thanks, but we have it mostly figured out. I’m taking Derek and Laura in, Scott is dropping off Cora on his way. Erica is going to pick them up in the afternoon and keep them until Lydia gets back from her conference. She’ll stay with them overnight and either drive them down on Friday or stick it out until the boys get back.”

“Allison isn’t around?” Jennifer asks, remembering a few jokes about her being a ‘live-in nanny’.

“She’s in Frisco with Lydia right now, and driving down to be with Stiles after. I… apparently Stiles… doesn’t deal well when his dad is hurt? Scott says Alli is the best at getting him to simmer down.”

A shrug. Apparently, Kira hasn’t been around the others for too long, either. Still a partial outside to the ocean worth of history these people seem to have between them.

Jennifer smiles. It feels plastic on her face, hard and fake. “Sounds like you have everything under control. But if you need anything, well, you know where I live.”

Kira nods. “Thank you. And thank you for coming over, too. Have a nice day!”

She waves as Jennifer trots to her car and gets in. She sits there for a moment, engine off, just staring at the wheel, suddenly viciously, bitingly angry. Because this is how it should have been. 

This. 

When Julia died, this is how her friends, her family, should have acted. Just there, unquestionable, helping, doing what needed doing. _Caring_. Not judgement and sly looks, distant pats on the head, _there, there_. 

_This_. 

Julia deserved that. And damn it, Jennifer does, too. She deserves people who come over in the middle of the night because she needs help. She deserves friends who throw over their plans to make a tough time easier for her. She deserves someone who drives from a conference to wherever the hell Beacon Hills is just to be there, to hold her hand. 

She deserved that and it’s not her fault that she didn’t get it, that she was left to flounder alone, lost and feeling like an imposition for her grief, her paralyzed pain. It’s not her fault that she had shit friends and a back-handed, useless family.

This is what it should have been like. 

And it took seeing a healthy, loving family in action for her to realize that it was even an option. That loss and pain should not have ostracized her.

She punches the steering wheel, just once, regrets it immediately as her hand stings something fierce and then makes a decision. After work, she’s hitting up the dollar store and putting together little goodie bags for Laura, Derek and Cora. It won’t fix anything, but it might distract them for a while. A little pick-me-up. 

And then she’s going to offer Lydia to either cook or mind the children while the other woman does. And she’s not going to take no for an answer. 

Because Jennifer deserved better when she was in crisis, down on the floor and in pain. And she’s going to make sure that the people across the yard, those kind, open, welcoming people, get exactly that.

Rubbing at her stinging knuckles, she reaches for her bag, digs out her phone, and texts Isaac about the children’s favorites. _I want to cheer them up a little,_ she writes, without explaining why they need it. She has zero doubt that he already knows exactly what is happening right now.

He texts back almost immediately, probably has his phone in hand, waiting for news from Stiles and Peter. His reply is a long litany of the kids’ current obsessions and likes, followed by a brief, _ur alrite, Blake_. 

She sends him back a smiley face, tucks away her phone and resolutely starts her car. 

She has things to do. 

+


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may have written myself into an emotional corner. I hope I'm getting out of it with some sort of grace. 
> 
> Warnings for this chapter include frank discussions of child neglect and abuse as well as dealing with trauma and, well, NOT dealing with it. I added a few new tags, please heed them.

+

Stiles walks.

He’d take the car but he knows damn well he shouldn’t get behind the wheel right now and also, Peter has the keys. He’s definitely not going back in there (daddy’s hospital room) to ask for them. 

Besides, where’d he go?

Back to the house? It’d only make everything worse to be there, in that shrine, the tomb, that goddamn reminder. How many nights did he fall asleep on that couch, waiting for John to come home? How many meals did he eat alone at that kitchen table, because John was at work? How many times did he wander that empty fucking place in search of something that just wasn’t there anymore.

He and Isaac had a very interesting debate once, about what is worse, abuse so continuous that the victim can’t remember better times, or a more sudden kind, where the victim can. 

They got all worked up about it, both of them, ended up screaming at each other, because they were trying to rate trauma, to assign a scale to it, this is worse than this and that hurts more than that. Like there are degrees of broken trust, when there really, really aren’t. It’s either broken or it isn’t. Damage has no middle ground.

Lyds finally separated them and they didn’t speak to each other for a week before Isaac showed up at Stiles’ with two bottles of cheap-ass tequila and they got so fucking smashed they ended up cuddling all night. 

And isn’t it funny, isn’t it terrible, how Stiles just segued from his empty childhood home into abuse without pause, without even a hitch?

He clenches his fists, walks faster, tucks his head against the early morning chill. The kids will just be waking up now, and finding him and Peter gone. Because their grandpa went and got his fool ass shot. Because he was careless, always careless. 

Because – he pushes the thought away. 

He knows that what John Stilinski did to him was neglect. He is aware of that. It is a definition, a fact he has learned, something lodged between all the other trivia inside his skull. But it’s an abstract concept because he’d never say, “I was neglected as a child.”

There’s dissonance there, too much to bridge. He talks around it. He says, “My dad worked a lot,” or, “My dad wasn’t around much.” Sometimes he goes as far as saying, “I kind of raised myself.”

Lets people (Peter) read between the lines. And it’s not like – okay, look. Isaac got locked in a freezer and beaten bloody just for being himself on the daily. Erica’s parents had four other, healthy children and just sort of… developed a selective blindness when it came to her, often not speaking to her for weeks. Boyd’s parents blamed him for his sister’s disappearance for years, hurling abuse at him for losing her, when it wasn’t his place to have her in the first place. Lydia hasn’t spoken to her father in fifteen years. Scott’s father was an abusive drunk on par with Mr. Lahey, until Melissa threatened to kill him if he didn’t leave and never come back. 

There are so, so many worse things Stiles could have grown up with. And look at that, here he is, rating abuse, again. Isaac will be so disappointed. 

It’s just that… god, what is he even doing here? Being angry. Furious. It’s a defense mechanism, he knows that. He gets scared and then he gets furious. And he hates himself for it, because it’s just so… trite. Stupid. 

And the shit he blurted back at the hospital, god. He should know better. He should be used to it. He’s never come first with his father. Not ever. Not when he was bleeding because mommy tried to gouge the monster out of his chest and daddy came home and ran to her first. Not when she died and instead of hugging his son, John embraced a bottle. Not when he had to choose between parent teacher night and another double shift at the station. Not when there was a random stranger at gunpoint versus a son who’d have no other living blood relation. 

The job comes first, even when the job isn’t the job anymore, apparently. Other people come first. His dad is a hero, is a good man, is a kind man. 

Just not to Stiles.

He should be used to it. He is. And in his head, he knows that that’s just another symptom of the disease, that it’s not right, that children should not be _used to_ coming second best. 

But what’s in his head and what’s in his heart have always been two different things. Two kinds of knowledge, equal but separate. 

He told Peter once that people dying and people being alive are two separate facts that have nothing to do with each other. 

Here are two more, then; _daddy doesn’t love me enough_ and _that’s not right._

He holds them both inside, both true, and neither touching upon the other. Separate, always. One does not impact the other. They should, but he can’t make them. Dissonance.

And all of that, all of that fucking, unholy mess inside of him, just boiled over when he saw his father there, pale and almost-dead and shot again and thought, with startling clarity, _I still don’t matter to him_.

Irrational, yeah, but that’s kind of the definition of emotion, isn’t it? Things beyond rational explanation. Daddy got shot. Daddy doesn’t want to live for me.

It was either running, or hitting someone just to get rid of the screaming, impotent fury of the little boy who just wants to be loved, wants to not be alone, wants to be _enough_. 

His phone chimes in his pocket and he jerks, pulls it out. Three texts. One from Alli, two from Peter. 

He reads Alli’s first, because she’s been his safety net for over a decade. _On my way_ , it says. Nothing more. Doesn’t need to be.

Peter. _Are you ok?_ and _where are you?_

_Ok_ , he texts back, _sry, walking._

It takes Peter less than thirty seconds to reply. _Are you coming back soon?_

_no_

_Can I come to you?_

Stiles pauses. Breathes. Considers. He wants Peter here, with him, wants to cling and cry and be told that it’s okay. That he’s allowed to be angry, that he’s good enough. All those things his father never said. 

Look at him, projecting his daddy issues onto his older partner. Fucking textbook. He shudders, shakes the thought away.

Doesn’t want Peter to see him like this, to be disappointed in his irrational, childish reaction. Stiles doesn’t lose his shit often, but when he does, it’s always way too fucking spectacular. 

He closes his messenger app, fiddles. Opens his emails. Orders for the store. One from Bobby. 

An appointment. Next week. Finalize the sale. He replies with an affirmative, saves the date into his calendar. He’s going to be buying a store next week. Four walls and a roof and it’ll belong to him. Always. 

Mundane shit. Amazing shit. 

He’s come so far and not moved at all.

He closes his emails. Pulls up Peter’s number, scans over the digits he learned by heart years ago. 

Hits dial before he can talk himself out of it. 

Peter answers, breathless, a moment later. “Are you alright, sweet boy?”

God, Stiles loves him. 

“Has anyone ever told you about what happened, back when – the last time dad got shot?”

A brief pause as the man changes tracks, settles in. Rustling of clothes. Quiet music in the background. Coffee shop, probably. It’s about that time, they should be opening now. It’s so predictable, Peter finding coffee first in a crisis, that it makes Stiles smile. 

“No. They all told me that it was your story to tell.” A beat. “And you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“Fuck no, I don’t want to. But I think I need to.”

“Alright then. I’m listening.”

Stiles doesn’t deserve him, really. 

“Random traffic check. The guy didn’t have a plate on his car, so dad pulled him over. License and registration, except what came out of the glove box was a gun. One shot, left shoulder. Lower than this time. I’m told it missed his heart by half an inch, an artery by less than that.”

“Jesus,” Peter breathes, not really interrupting, just commenting. 

+

“Jesus,” Peter breathes, partly because he wasn’t aware how close John got to dying, how close Stiles got to being orphaned before he finished high school, and partly because of the clinical, cool way Stiles tells him. Surgical. Precise. 

Stiles shouldn’t ever sound like that. It’s the antithesis of everything he is. 

“The guy peeled out of there, dad managed to call for backup before he passed out, emergency surgery, all that shit. Since the guy didn’t have a license plate and a pretty fucking generic car, they couldn’t track him from the dash cam footage. 

“Traffic cams weren’t a thing back then, not out here, and dad’s description was vague, thanks to, you know, getting shot.”

He takes a long breath. Peter tries not to clutch his paper cup of coffee hard enough to spill any. He went outside when the call came, settled on the small patio by the door. Watches the drink steam. He’d not dressed warmly enough for this early in the morning. Neither is Stiles. Their unfit clothing seems a lovely metaphor for this whole fucking night. Morning now. God. Shit. 

“I was at school. Got pulled out. Don’t really remember how I made it to the hospital, but there he was. Still drugged and they hadn’t cleaned the blood away perfectly, so some was dried on his neck and his hands. And I just… I wasn’t of age, yet. And I stood there, and I thought, if he dies now, I’ll go into foster care, just like Isaac, and no-one’s going to give a fuck. 

“And then I thought… I thought, this is just like him. Didn’t give a fuck about his kid, about how I’d be alone, didn’t ever give a fuck about what him dying would do to me. And I hated him for getting shot. Like he planned it, or something. Like he could help it. It was my worst fucking nightmare come to life and I _hated him_.”

“Stiles,” Peter interrupts, a reflex. He doesn’t think he wants to hear the rest of this story. He knows, has always known, that there are deep, dark things inside of Stiles, that somewhere in his chest, there lives the demon whose wings he keeps on his back. The way Stiles deals with other people’s grief, with their rage and helplessness, speaks of bitter experience. Of wanting, needing, to be better.

He was curious, yes, but he never wanted to find out like this, when Stiles sounds like every single word is hurting him. He wanted to be told the same way he was told about childhood shenanigans and the one time Lydia and Stiles tried to have sex. Casually, safely. With an undertone of memory, of it’s-over-now-it’s-okay. 

Not like this. 

“Shut up, Peter,” Stiles counters, “let me get this out, before I chicken out again.”

“You don’t owe me this,” Peter tries. He doesn’t want to know. Doesn’t need to know. 

“Maybe I owe it to myself,” Stiles snaps, sharply. Angrily. Stiles angry is a creature full of edges and shards turned inwards. Peter didn’t know that before tonight.

He swallows, keeps his mouth shut. 

“I went searching for the guy. I was so angry I was shaking with it and I _hated_ my dad, so I screamed myself hoarse at him and then I went looking for the guy.”

Because Stiles, being Stiles, didn’t allow himself to rage against the people he loved, didn’t let himself be scared and hurt instead of angry. Because he didn’t think he had any right to it. 

Allison jokes about Stiles’ lack of self-esteem sometimes, with an edge to it like it isn’t a joke at all, but Peter never really understood how deep it really goes. 

“You found him,” he concludes, because he loves a brilliant, clever man, and he would. He absolutely would.

“Of course I did. It took me eight weeks and a lot of legwork, not all of it legal, a lot of favors, some of which ended up being really, very not legal and absolutely idiotic, but I found him.”

A long breath, a long pause. 

“His name is Demond Baker. Then forty-two. The car wasn’t stolen, but it wasn’t registered. He had cash problems. Couldn’t pay for the upkeep. Went to his ex’s place that day, to borrow money. She didn’t give him any, so he left, torqued. When dad pulled him over, he just snapped. Shot him and bailed. I found him, two towns over.”

“What did you do?”

“I drove out there. On a Friday, after school. Told everyone I’d be over at Alli’s, told Alli I wanted to be alone. Got them off my back. Knocked on his door. And when he opened it, I punched him hard enough to break his nose. Shoved him inside and – “

Peter tries to imagine it. Stiles, gangly, a teenager, hurting someone. Physically beating someone. Can’t. It’s not who Stiles is. He feels guilty for smacking the kids’ hands away when they try to steal veggies from the chopping board, risking their fingers with the knife. 

“Alli figured it out. Jackson made a passing comment about her and me and her bedroom, ‘studying’, and it clicked. She followed me, pulled me off. Called the cops. If… if I hadn’t been the Sheriff’s son, if she hadn’t been there, if she hadn’t threatened Baker into silence, I’d have gone to jail. I’d have deserved it.”

He falls silent again. There are no background noises where he is. Only silence. 

“So there you have it. I’ll… I need to walk it off, okay?” Because this time, there’s nowhere for his angerfearpanic to go. No-one to aim at. “I’m sorry, I’m… sorry. Love you.”

He hangs up before Peter can reply in any way. Before he can tell him that it doesn’t change anything, that he’s not suddenly scared of Stiles. He has always known Stiles had ugly things in his past and he has never cared. The details don’t matter.

Jesus, the whole thing happened thirteen years ago. It’s ancient history. 

He considers calling Stiles back, but doesn’t want to provoke him into turning off his phone. Doesn’t. Sips his coffee. 

His cell rings again a moment later, and he jumps, thinks – but it’s Lydia. 

“Allison is on her way to you,” she tells him, no greeting, no fanfare. She sounds tired and cranky. Less than twelve hours ago (Jesus Fuck), Stiles got a selfie from Alli, her and Lydia, red-cheeked and grinning, drunk. 

Instead of responding to her words, Peter blurts, “Stiles doesn’t think his father loves him enough.”

He can almost see her purse her lips. 

“John loves Stiles,” she answers, pointedly not adding a quantifier to her statement. Peter has always gotten the impression that she’s not a big fan of the former Sheriff. 

“I’ll skip the last presentation, drive back home earlier. I’m staying with the kids tonight. Do you want me to bring them to you tomorrow?"

“Thank you. Can I get back to you on that? I don’t want –“ he trails off, vaguely guilty and too tired to analyze it. This is such a cluster fuck. The last time he was this confused, worn-out and emotional, he’d just come back to a burning house and the cops’ solemn faces as they tried to break the news gently. 

This fucking town. 

Lydia gets what he’s trying to say anyway because she’s brilliant and blunt. “You don’t want them around Stiles before he’s got his shit together.”

“They have enough bad memories of this place.” They were there, after all, when one of the deputies pulled off his head, smeared soot on his temple with one hand by accident and said, very quietly, “I am so sorry. The fire spread too fast for the fire men to get to them in time.”

She hums. “Remind him that we love him, will you. And that he’s not alone.”

“Will do. Thank you.”

“It’s what we’re here for,” she deflects. “I have to go. Take care.”

And she’s gone. 

+


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay. This is where the 'emotionally written into a corner' thing I mentioned last chapter comes in. This is long and messy and all over the place, but it is not getting better, so here, have it. Forgive me. I'm sorry.

+

Allison hates mornings. There is a reason she picked a career where she can set her own working hours. 

Goddamn.

The hangover and the rush hour traffic out of San Francisco aren’t helping anything. She powers through, though, cranks the stereo as high as she can without feeling like the top of her head is flying off. 

Drives. 

Halfway there, she leaves her father a voicemail, short and to the point. Stiles is having a meltdown, I’m coming to town. Have a bunk for me?

He calls back within fifteen minutes.

“No. I rented your old room out to a hobo from City Park.”

“Love you, too, daddy,” she shoots back, sighs. “I hate mornings.”

“I know, honey. I assume Stiles’ current state of mind has to do with John’s latest stunt?”

The Parent Pipeline. Right. She forgot about that. Stupid. 

“Mel caught you up?”

“She came right over after her shift to steal my coffee and cuss him out.”

“Stiles?”

“Shouted and then fled the scene, apparently. Peter went after him and Mel came to me.”

“Poor baby.”

“Hey, according to my daughter, I’m middle-aged. That means I need my beauty-sleep.”

She snorts. “Not sure that’ll help.”

“Did I mention she’s mean, too? I have no idea where I went wrong in raising her.” He snorts. “Do you have your key? I have to be at the office by nine, so I can’t let you in.”

She risks a brief glance down at her keychain, despite already knowing the answer. “Always. I think I’ll tackle Stiles first, though. I might just crash afterwards.”

There’s a brief pause and then her father smiles. She can hear it. “You’re a good person, Alli. I’m proud of you.”

“And I’m proud of you,” she echoes, that old formula from the time after the accident, when they both fell to pieces only to pull themselves back up by the hair. She still misses her mother every day, but the thought of losing her dad makes her breath catch in her throat. Last two Argents standing. She can’t imagine life without him just a phone call away.

“See you tonight, honey. Love you.”

“Love you, too. Later.”

+

She finds Stiles exactly where she knew she would, even though she’d bet money on the fact that he hasn’t realized yet just where he is. 

After all, it’s really just an unremarkable stretch of road, not quite town, not quite preserve. In-between. 

It’s where a man named Desmond Baker shot Sheriff Stilinski more than thirteen years ago, almost killing him and setting Stiles on a path he almost, almost didn’t manage to come back from. 

He’s sitting on a picnic bench a hundred yards down the road, staring into the middle distance, legs curled under him. He doesn’t look like a thirty-year-old successful businessman and parent of three. 

He just looks like the lost boy he used to be. 

Pulling the car onto the shoulder of the road, she gets out, sending a quick _he’s okay_ to Peter, who must be frantic by now. 

Stiles jumps at the sound of her car door slamming, then grins wanly. “Figures they’d send you.”

She shoves at him until he scoots over, then sits next to him, pressing against his side. “I sent myself.”

“I’m being an idiot,” he starts, not looking at her. 

“Just because your feelings are illogical that doesn’t make them invalid.” She’s quoting him, knowing he’ll hate it. Also knowing that his emotions are not, in fact, illogical, just very, very old and confused, but there are things you can tell Stiles and things you can’t tell Stiles and this is definitely one of the latter. 

He grunts, sneers. “I lost it at dad for not loving me enough to not risk his life. That’s nuts.” A shrug. “And then I told Peter about Baker.”

Ouch.

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. I hung up before he could really react.”

She snorts. “Okay. You are an idiot.”

“Shut up, Argent.”

“Screw you, Stilinski.” She slips her arm into his, takes his hand, squeezes. “We don’t do this enough anymore.”

“What? Angst?”

“Spend time alone together. These days, it’s always SOs and kids and, just… people. We should make time for each other again.”

He doesn’t say anything, just squeezes her hand a little. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, eventually.

“About?” Everything. His shitty childhood. The fact that he doesn’t think he’s worthy of half the things he so much deserves.

“That things aren’t better with your dad. You had that do-over a couple years ago, but I guess that’s all it was, a do-over. You didn’t really deal with all that old crap, just started over fresh.” She might have spent an afternoon or two watching John with his honorary grandkids, musing on missed chances and broken bridges. 

He tilts his head sideways, rubs his cheek against her temple. Makes a face as he eats a wayward stand of her hair, spits it back out, splutters a little. “I should be over it by now.”

“You are,” she argues, instantly. “Like, 299 days out of 300, you are over it. It’s just that sometimes, it boils up again and that’s okay, Stiles. He’s your dad and he… he failed you. A lot. He didn’t mean to, and he’s sorry, but he did. And you get to be hurt by that.” She releases his hand, wraps her arm around his waist, scoots even closer. “You don’t expect the kids to be over their parents, or Erica or Boyd or Lyds or Isaac. So why don’t you cut yourself the same slack?”

Before he can mount a protest, she barrels on, knowing full well he’ll deflect the shit out of things if she lets him get a word in edge-wise. Stiles likes fixing everything but himself. It’s goddamn annoying. And she has Thoughts on the Subject. “Our parents shape us. With the things they do and the things they don’t do and we never get out from under their shadow. Not really. We just have to make it our own. And, Stiles, you have. You are an amazing friend and a good person and a fantastic parent.”

Because John wasn’t, really, and Stiles is terrified of being the same sort of parent, so he showers the kids with affection and attention and love and devotion and Alli hopes that, one day, they will understand just how fucking privileged they are, to be so unconditionally loved by one Stiles Stilinski. 

(God knows, John never did.)

As always, he can’t take the compliment, so he deflects. “I’m not, technically, their parent.”

Not yet. Because Peter can’t get his ass into gear, waiting for the perfect moment that’ll never come. 

Before she blurts something Stiles’ worse half will murder her for, she backtracks. “Did you say you yelled at your dad about not loving you enough?”

Hello, Stiles’ lack of self-esteem. So nice to see you again. Always knew you weren’t really gone. They all make jokes about it, but it’s not actually funny, here and now.

He hunches instantly, ashamed. She shakes her head. “Stiles, you’re the one always telling people that fact a and fact b have nothing to do with each other. I don’t really think how much he loves you,” (or doesn’t love you), “featured when he decided to try and save a life.”

“Different things,” he mutters, quietly, like it’s a thought he’s been turning over himself. Clever, stupid boy. If they left him here for a week, he might actually figure it out by himself, eventually. Fortunately, he doesn’t have to.

Then he drops his face into his hands, sighs. “God, I’m fucked up. I don’t know whether to be afraid, worried, resentful, angry or embarrassed.”

“Well, the embarrassment is bullshit. As for everything else, how about you give yourself a while to feel all of it and then we find Peter? I guarantee he’s going to hug you for _at least_ a minute.”

“Great. Add guilt to the pile, why don’t you?” It doesn’t sound like his usual snark, far from it, but it sounds more like himself than anything else has so far. Alli is grateful, because she really has no tools for handling Stiles other than telling him that he’s okay, that what he feels is okay, and then anchor him while he works through it himself. 

He’s always been too stubborn to console with platitudes, or to take advice. All that she knows to do is show him that she’s with him, on his side, as always, and let him figure the rest out himself. 

“Okay?” she asks.

“Okay,” he allows. Shifts his butt. “You don’t happen to have a blanket in the car, though, do you? My ass is going numb.”

+

Jennifer doesn’t have afternoon classes on Thursdays, which is a godsend, and also makes it so she’s home by two, even with her errands. 

It takes her about two minutes to figure out that the Hale children are, too. Since, apparently, their grandfather got shot, someone seemingly decided a half day was enough for them.

Good. 

She puts away her things, sighs over the grading she’ll have to do over the weekend, and changes into comfortable shorts and a shirt. Then she grabs her purse, the gifts for the children and heads right back out.

Lydia opens the door, looking paler than the last time Jennifer saw her, and still wearing a pencil skirt and blouse ensemble that is most certainly designer. 

“Hello,” she offers and fights the urge to wave like an idiot. Lydia is intimidating. 

“Hello. Can I help you? Because I’m kind of busy.” Rude. Also, understandable.

“I know. I came over this morning, Kira told me. I’m here to offer some help? And, uhm, I know they’re not going to fix anything, but I thought maybe these might distract the kids for a bit? This can’t be easy on them.”

She holds up the goodie bags. Derek is into dinosaurs, Isaac informed her, so his has a t-rex on it and is filled with a few plastic dinos, as well as a jigsaw for his age group. Laura likes fairy tales and Transformers. To avoid a stereotype, Jennifer went with a Transformers bag, a the first movie in the franchise on sale and a jewelry making kit. Cora likes ‘bright colors, she’s two’, which earned her a stack of coloring books and pencils. It’s not a lot, but it’s a little something. 

Lydia’s eyebrows rise as she seems to take Jennifer in, top to bottom. Finally, she offers, “It certainly won’t hurt. Do you want to come in? Fair warning, they’re all in a mood.”

“Understandable. I don’t mind.”

The redhead steps aside with a smile and what might be a glimmer of respect in her gaze. Jennifer enters.

+

Peter has finished his coffee, returned to the hospital, spent half an hour on the phone, first with Amy, then with Kira, and lastly with Lydia. He has gotten John’s house key from him and taken a nap that lasted several hours, thanks to the utter exhaustion nestling in his bones. 

All that time, he hasn’t stopped looking at his phone, trying to make it magically show Stiles’ name. 

He’s worked out the exact order of the things he’s going to say. One, he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about what Stiles did as a lost, lonely teenager. Two, people lash out in fear all the time, it’s a normal reaction. Three, even if John doesn’t love his son (which he does), Peter absolutely and with all his heart does. Loves him enough to want him there for the rest of his life, to share his children and his home and what’s left of his future. 

Well, maybe not three because he is not going to propose in the middle of this mess. 

Also, his balls might climb back into his body if he said all that out loud and at once and Stiles would laugh himself sick. They’re not romantic, neither of them, and grand declarations make them both giggle uncontrollably. 

But the first two points definitely stand. Peter loves Stiles and Stiles has nothing to be ashamed of. End of story. Yeah, maybe he’ll put it like that. Better. 

Now if only his wayward partner would _show the fuck up_. He’s been gone for nearly eight hours and Peter is freaking the fuck out. 

Oh, he got Alli’s text, but that was _five hours ago_. He’s going to get his first grey hair at this rate. 

And to top it all off, his inner monologue sounds like Stiles now. Has for a while, really. 

With a groan, he sinks back into a chair in John’s kitchen, rubbing at his eyes. He’s tired. He’s worried. He has no idea how to explain this mess to his kids. 

He can’t – 

The door opens with a creak and a jiggle of keys, followed by a wry, “That doesn’t look comfortable.”

His head shoots up so fast, he’s afraid of giving himself whiplash. “Stiles!”

He more or less leaps to his feet, ignoring Allison hovering in the background and hauls Stiles in for a too tight hug. And what comes out of his mouth next is, of course, a far cry from his carefully laid words.

“How many breakdowns have you coached me through in the past few years, you idiot? And at the first sign of having one yourself you run away from me.”

Stiles mumbles something into his shoulder that sounds a lot like, “Don’t like it when I get like that.”

“Nobody likes being like that. But we deal with it together, damn it.”

At that, the younger man pulls back, a glint of humor in his eye. “Mother hen.”

Before they can devolve into full-out banter (and don’t think Peter isn’t aware that he’s being masterfully diverted), Alli pipes up, “See? Told you.”

Stiles flaps a hand at her. “Yes, yes, you’re awesome. Go visit Chris. He’s probably pining already.”

She snorts. “Asshole. I’ll see you two later, yeah?”

With one last significant look toward both of them, she lets herself back out the door. Peter decides to screw it and hauls Stiles in for another, longer hug. 

+

So, Peter is not mad at him. 

Yay!

Peter was also apparently worried sick.

Not yay.

Guiltily, Stiles buries his head in the other man’s shoulder and holds on that much tighter. He _hates_ when he worries people. Worrying is his job. And Peter has enough on his plate already and – 

He stops the spiral. Barely. After all the time Alli put into informing him, none too gently, that he is loved, that he is cared for and that there are people out there who would do anything for him, including her, it seems a bad idea to slide back into his ‘daddy doesn’t love me enough to not die’ mindset. He’s okay. He’s okay, he’s okay.

It’s a mantra, but it’s also true. Every other day but today he’s okay and he thinks, right here and now, that he might be, too. He has Peter and Peter loves him. He’s okay.

Eventually, Peter pulls back just enough to look him in the face and asks, “What do we do now?”

Stiles frowns, because all he wants to do is sleep until the big, bad world goes away, but. But. “

What are my options?” he asks, aware that Peter needs a plan, because Peter is a planner, and Stiles would probably profit from some kind of plan, too. His head’s enough of a mess. Might as well keep the outside world predictable. 

“Leaving for home,” Peter ticks off, “staying and driving back to the hospital. Staying and going back to the hospital tomorrow.”

Don’t talk to dad, talk to dad, talks to dad later, Stiles translates. 

Honestly, door one sounds fantastic. Right up until he imagines the faces of the kids when he tries to explain to them that Stiles just burned all bridges with their only grandparent so they probably won’t see him for a while. Or ever again.

… Which would be pretty much the same as if the shooter had hit his target and the man had actually died. 

“Not one,” he mumbles, chewing on his lip ring, tugging one hand free to press his fingers into the edge of his wings, to hold on. “And I don’t think two is a good idea, either. I… I have to think, about what I want to say. It’s not… things aren’t alright. We fake it well, but we never really….”

He’s okay. He’s okay. He’s okay.

He’s not okay.

Stilinski men don’t talk. The conversation they had two years ago, in this exact kitchen, was more than they’d talked pretty much _ever before_. And all that talk amounted to, was John admitting that he hadn’t done that bang-up of a job as a father and that he wanted to do better in the future. And Stiles likes how things have changed. He likes seeing his father more often, seeing him play with the children. He likes that he comes up for Christmas and other holidays. 

That he calls more often. 

But it doesn’t change the fact that, for most of his childhood, he was left alone in these walls and that hurt is probably never going to go away, no matter how much Stiles tries to ignore it. 

What did Alli say? He’s over it 299 out of 300 days? But today is day 300 and all the shit has boiled over. Which is a really very lovely imagery, thank you, brain. 

He smacks his forehead against Peter’s collarbone and ignores both their winces. “I’m sorry I’m such a steaming pile of neurotic childhood issues,” he mumbles. 

Peter, snorting, tugs him up pretty much by the ears to look him dead in the eye. “Stiles. Stiles. Remember how we met? Me, bringing my traumatized-to-the-point-of-mutism kid to your store in a last ditch effort to get him to interact with _anything_? Shortly after which you found one of my other kids wandering alone in the park because I missed a very obvious trigger and she didn’t think she could come to me with her grief? How, only a few months after that, we came to this lovely town here to turn off my sister’s machines forever and bury her, three wailing, miserable children in tow? Any of that ring a bell?”

Vaguely. He says as much. Peter chuckles, presses a kiss to his lips and then his forehead. “Your turn,” he offers.

“What? To be a mess? You didn’t sign up for this, Peter.”

That earns him a smack around the head, which, ouch. “Yes, Stiles, I did. That is exactly what I signed up for when I agreed to share my life with you. Your trauma and my trauma and the kids’ trauma, all of it, together. I wouldn’t want to marry you if I didn’t. So stop feeling guilty over not being perfect. I’m not going to leave you because you’re human. If anything, it’ll be your atrocious taste in music.”

“Hey! WHAM! is a classic!” Stiles argues, reflexively. 

Then freezes.

“Did you just say you want to marry me?”

Peter freezes, too. All of him, head to toe, just sort of goes… utterly rigid and the only other time Stiles has seen him do that was when Laura asked how gay sex works, pretty please, she doesn’t get it, and it’d be funny if it weren’t… well.

“Peter?”

Nope. Frozen. 

If Stiles had to guess, he’d say Peter is currently experiencing the human equivalent of Blue Screen. In his case, it seems to involve a lot of shallow breathing and an unsettling lack of blinking. 

“Peter? Deep breath?” Stiles chews at his lip hard enough to pull his ring. It stings and he flinches, lets go. “Look, if that was, like, some kind of weird lack of filter thing, and you didn’t mean to actually say that then it’s absolutely fine, you’re not obligated to like, marry me now, that would be really weird, right, yeah, it would be weird, and we can both just forget it happened, it’s fine, neither of us has really gotten any sleep and the, ehm, emotional….ity of the whole situation is kind of getting to you, probably it’s fine, we should just-“

“Stiles?”

“Oh, thank god, I thought I was going to pass out from lack of oxygen before you snapped out of it, that would have really topped off the-“

“Stiles. Shut the fuck up.”

Stiles jaw clicks shut with an audible noise. 

Peter takes that deep breath, though, which Stiles counts as a win. Then he opens his mouth to talk and Stiles… dies a little?

“I’m not taking back what I said. I’ve been trying to ask that damn question for weeks and I never managed to get a word in edge-wise and, of course, the one time I actually manage it, is the shittiest possible moment I could have picked.” He takes another deep breath. “It wasn’t an accident, I’m not taking it back, but I am sorry I blurted it out like that. The kids are going to go rabid. I have a ring and paperwork and everything back home.”

“You have a _ring_?!”

“Of course I have a ring. I’m not Scott.”

Because Scott will never, ever live down the story of how he had to propose to Kira twice because he misplaced the ring the first time. Despite, it should be mentioned, no less than three people reminding him beforehand.

Hold on. Why is Stiles thinking of Scott right now?

“What paperwork?”

“Adoption paperwork.”

“The kids are in on this?”

Peter cringes again. “Yeah. We probably need to make dentist appointments for all three. I’ve been bribing them with candy to keep their traitorous little mouths shut. I still can’t believe you didn’t figure it out. Everyone did pretty much the second I started looking for a ring.”

Which, yeah. In hindsight, there were a few signs. “Oh my god, you set Alli on me! You evil bastard! I’m so proud of you for using her Disney Princess Deceptive Powers for your own gain!”

“Thank you. And I’m sorry I ruined it.”

Idiot. “You didn’t ruin anything.” Stiles inhales. Exhales. Maybe pinches himself because this is ridiculous and stupid and something straight out of a rom-com and his life doesn’t work like that. Scratch that, no-one’s life works like that. Except, apparently, there is a man who loves him enough to bend the world to his will just because. For once, Stiles manages to make the little voice in his head that keeps whispering ‘not for you, why would he do this for you’ shut up. 

Actually, he gags, hogties and punts it into the metaphorical farthest corner of his mind. “So?”

Peter blinks. This may be as emotionally stressful for him as it is for Stiles. Go figure. 

“So what?”

“So, are you going to ask me? Because you haven’t yet.”

And there he is, flabbergasted expression replaced by that little smirk that makes Stiles almost, almost understand sexual attraction whenever it’s flashed at him. “I could wait until we get home, get the ring and the kids and-“

“Don’t. You. Fucking. Dare.”

Peter’s smirk grows wider. He grabs Stiles’ hand, squeezes and then, looking him dead in the eye, he says, “Stiles Stilinski.”

Stiles bites his lip ring hard and doesn’t squeal like a twelve-year-old.

“I love you. You are completely ridiculous and absolutely crazy, my house is full of pointy objects and yarn and your friends shed all over the furniture and you kick in your sleep and wear a goddamn glow-in-the-dark piercing in your face and teach our kids pirate shanties when I’m not looking and we, all four of us, could survive without you in our lives, but we don’t want to. Not now, not ever. So please, light of my life, king of the nuthouse, only person I’ve ever let get away with using my toothbrush,” Stiles groans and Peter winks, “will you adopt me and marry our children?”

It’s ridiculous and over-the-top and it’s messy and it’s so, so very much _them_ , that Stiles doesn’t even try to respond verbally. He just leans forward, pressing a kiss full of laughter against Peter’s still smirking mouth and let’s that be his answer.

Peter wraps his arms around him, hauls him in closer and doesn’t let go for a long time. 

(Not even when Stiles starts crying and then, eventually, in the privacy of his childhood bedroom, sobbing. Especially not then.)

+

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone preparing to leap down my throat for shunting Stiles' issues off to one side in favor of fluff - please don't. This is by no means resolved. Just... keep hanging in there and trust me?


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Resolution, of a sort. 
> 
> (Margaritas is real and I adore that place. Best nachos and shittiest tequila ever.)

+

God, what a day.

And it’s barely three. Allison lets herself into her childhood home, drops her overnight bag right next to her shoes and stumbles into the adjacent living room, where she flops onto the couch like a dead fish and lets out a long, drawn-out groan.

Peace. Quiet. Emotional tranquility. Time for a nap. A long one, to forget all about her hangover and the road trip from hell and Stiles’ emotional scars and all the shoddy patchwork she did on them and… all of that. Nap. Long nap. Nap of forgetting.

Best. Thing. Ever. 

Someone chuckles. She frees one hand from under her belly and wordlessly flips them off. 

“Now, I know I raised you better than that,” her dad comments. She can hear his smirk.

“Hangover. Drama. Shut up,” she mutters into the cushions.

“Hot chocolate or coffee?” is his counter offer. It’s almost enough to make her open her eyes. Almost.

“Yes.”

He laughs again and pads out of the room. She can hear him in the kitchen and lets herself relax a little more. She hasn’t lived here in well over a decade, but she knows those sounds. Home. 

After a few minutes of drowsing, he returns. “Turn over, honey,” he tells her and, with a grunt, Alli does. 

He shoves her into a semi-sitting position against the one armrest and tucks her legs into his lap as he sits next to her, passing her a huge mug filled with steaming hot chocolate. She takes a sip, burns her tongue and sighs in contentment. There’s a shot of espresso in there. 

She smiles at him. “You’re the best,” she declares. 

Her squeezes her calves and relaxes into the couch, propping his feet on the coffee table. “So? How did it go?”

She shrugs, hums and enjoys her hot chocolate. “It went. I mean, I think I may have managed to convince him that it’s at least okay to not be okay, but it’s Stiles, so you know. He might just have nodded along and gone back to nurturing his issues as soon as I dropped him off at the Sheriff’s place.”

With another squeeze to her calf, her dad says, “You know it’s not your place to fix him. He’s a grown man. You did your best.”

She snorts. “But, you see, it is. Because Stiles is always, always there for me, even when I’ve been a grump for month because of that damn book, and it was my turn today.” She waves a mock-fist in her father’s face. “Damn you for raising me right!”

Knee pat. “I’m sorry. Change of subject. You’re still having trouble with the book? I thought it was pretty much finished when you came back from Europe?”

“It was. I mean, it still is. But Meredith insists that the ending is too Harry Potter Epilogue and I have to change it to fit the tone of the story better.”

“You’re still on that?” He sounds incredulous. Considering it’s been literal months, that’s not too surprising. They’re talking something like ten to twenty pages here. She’s been fussing over them for longer than it took her to write the entire first and second drafts, by now. 

With a morose nod, she agrees, “Yeah. I’ve written about a hundred versions? I started saving them at some point, just for shits and giggles, and there are currently fifty-six, so a hundred is not, actually, an exaggeration.”

“Where’s the problem?”

“Urgh. If I knew, I would have fixed it by now! I just… I write them and then I read over them and they feel _wrong_ , you know?”

“Can’t say I do,” he admits, with a chuckle. Books, to Chris Argent, are tools for information gathering. Leisure reading is not a thing he has ever understood. It was her mother who introduced Alli to the million upon million worlds she could dive into with only a bit of paper and ink. Oh, he encouraged her reading, buying her pretty much every book she ever wanted, but he never _got_ it. 

Neither did Scott. Isaac reads a little, but Stiles gets it perfectly, which is why he was the best roommate. They just filled the whole apartment with books and books and books and it was like a library in their own home. Moving apart was actually hell because they spent days fighting over who owns which books. 

(Don’t tell anyone, but half the reason she’s dragging her feet moving out is that she’s barely made a dent in Peter’s book collection. The man may be a recovering sleazeball, but damn he knows his books. He has all the Brontes and at least five different versions of _Alice in Wonderland_. Several of them are illustrated. She drooled.)

“But I do understand a bit about stressing out about work. Why don’t you grab your stuff and come down here for a while? You can write in peace, away from everything, and we can hang out.”

It’s as close to ‘I miss you’ as he’s probably ever going to get.

“Really?”

“Of course, honey. I know you don’t live here anymore, that you have your own life, but this will always be your home. You don’t have to ask permission, or come with a purpose. You can just be here, the way you used to before college. Get a little distance. Maybe it’ll help.”

Carefully, Alli leans sideways to put her mug on the coffee table. Then she almost brains herself with her own knees while twisting forward enough to tackle her father in a tight, warm hug. 

“Thanks,” she mutters into his chest. 

He presses a kiss to her hair and holds her tightly. 

+

Now that there is actually, finally, a sort of peace, Peter’s too wired to sleep. He’s exhausted to the bone, or, worse, the soul, something he hasn’t felt since the initial months after the fire, but he can’t sleep.

He just proposed to Stiles. At the worst possible moment, without the ring. Just blurted it out like a goddamn rom com cliché. Vaguely, he remembers a time in his life when he was smooth and suave and in control of his life. 

It was terribly boring, but also kind of nice. Peaceful. Less emotionally draining than having your partner of two years suddenly turn into Mr. Hyde in the face of his father’s injury, disappear and then come back hours later, with a broken look in his eyes. Certainly less draining than accidentally proposing marriage to said partner while trying desperately to reassure him of your love for him. 

Shit. 

Rubbing a hand over his face and turning to consider Stiles, pale, bags under his eyes, dead to the world, Peter grabs his phone. He should update everyone back home. All the other emotionally messy disturbances he never really wanted in his life but now has and desperately loves. 

The things the children and Stiles have done to him. Do to him. Hopefully forever. _Talia,_ he thinks, for the first time in a while, _you’d laugh yourself stupid at what’s become of me._

She’d like this version of him better than the one she knew, he thinks, and feels the welling of old regret. Talia will never know that he found his place after all, somewhere beyond chrome-and-glass offices and empty, meaningless flings. She’ll never know that Cora’s curls were a fluke and that she’s growing typically straight, dark Hale hair now. She’ll never learn about Derek’s craft obsession or know that Laura has a talent for languages.

She’ll never know that they’re okay, that they miss her and that they are loved. 

His phone screen blinks six pm at him. He could call the house, talk to Lydia, the kids. He doesn’t want to. Actually forming words right now, explaining, trying to sound positive for the children after the day he’s had… god. Fuck. 

He texts Ms. Martin instead, a simple status update, Grandpa is okay, he’ll get out of the hospital soon, they can visit him in a week or so. They’ll be back tomorrow afternoon, don’t forget Laura has karate class tomorrow right after school. Love, be good, miss you. 

Clearly, Lydia gives up her phone to Derek and Laura as soon as she reads the text, because the answer he gets is spelled terribly and involves too many emojis to be hers. 

_we mis u come home soon. Tell grandpa hi we love him. Cora said a bad word. Jennys over she nice. Xoxoxo and kisses_

He sends them back a winky face because he doesn’t give a shit about sounding clever at this point, and puts down his phone with a yawn. 

Then he picks the phone back up and puts the CoA group chat on silent, because they’re all getting off work around now and he knows what happens next. 

(They’re going to murder him when they find out he proposed. And then they’re going to laugh at him forever for doing it so badly. And he’ll tolerate it bad-naturedly, because Stiles said yes despite everything and these people come in a jumbo combo family pack and he’ll not kill them in their sleep because Stiles loves them and none of this is making sense and he’s really very tired.)

Eventually, he sleeps. 

+

“Do I have to?” Stiles whines, plaintively, at the main entrance of the Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital. Peter is tugging on one of his hands, Alli on the other. They’re getting looks. Neither of them care.

He thinks they’re probably just glad he sounds a bit more like himself this morning, he thinks, vaguely guilty.

“Yes, Stiles,” Alli snaps, the same instant Peter drawls, “Of course not. You can absolutely leave this to fester for another twenty years.”

Oh, Stiles hates him. Why did he agree to marry that sarcastic asshole, again? Oh, right, because he loves him. 

Oh god, he’s getting married. To Peter. There’s a ring waiting for him back home. 

That thought is finally enough to propel him forward. He’ll get this over with, he’ll rip up all the old wounds even further and let his dad see the blood, let him see the damage, because he has to know and Stiles has to tell (he knows, okay, he knows, and he may have had a text conversation with Isaac at three am that drove home the point), and then he’s going home to his children and his life and there will be a ring. 

For him. Because Peter loves him and never wants to leave him. Because, at least for the Hales, Stiles is enough. 

He takes a deep breath and starts forward so abruptly, that all of a sudden, he’s the one pulling Peter and Alli along in his wake. He can feel them exchanging raised eyebrows behind his back as they follow.

In front of his dad’s room, he takes another deep breath, tells himself that he can do this, and then lets go of their hands and pushes inside. They follow. He loves them for that. 

His father isn’t hooked up to any machines anymore (there’s wires coming out of mommy and her heart beepbeebeeps and never stops and the sound grates on his ears and he wants it to stop and feels so ashamed for it) but sitting up in bed eating what is most likely contraband pudding smuggled in by Melissa. 

Stiles takes an automatic breath to start lecturing about heart conditions and healthy eating and empty calories and please daddy don’t die too, I don’t want to be alone, and then he… stops. 

He can see his father tense, hand clenching around that little plastic cup like Stiles will rip it out of his hands, like a child caught and preparing to be scolded and – 

No. 

Stiles is done taking that on.

It’s not his job. It never was. 

“Hi, dad,” he says instead and his voice only wavers a little and when he stretches back a hand, Peter’s is already waiting for him, warm and strong and reassuring. 

(Peter is always waiting for him.)

“Hi, Stiles. Peter. Alli, I didn’t know you were in town, too.”

She shrugs, sidles up to stand shoulder to shoulder with Stiles. “I drove up yesterday. Stiles needed someone to bounce off of.” And before anyone can comment on that, she goes right on, “And he needs to say a few things to you. And then, I think, you need to say a few things to him. I’m here to moderate.” She pauses. “And then we’re having lunch with Mel.”

“We are?”

She nods. “Yeah, we are. I made reservations at _Margaritas_.”

Stiles and Peter both wince. _Margaritas_ is the tacky Mexican place with the bar and the happy hour tequila shots and every teenager who grew up in Beacon Hills has gotten completely wasted there at least once because they don’t card really well. Or, you know, at all. It’s a hole.

They serve excellent nachos, though, and day drinking sounds like an awesome idea.

Alli nods sagely as she sees the dawning comprehension on her friends’ faces and then takes two steps sideways, plonking down in a visitor’s chair and waving her hand at Stiles. “Start now.”

There goes the brief moment of levity. 

Stiles takes two deep breaths (this is becoming a thing) and plants himself at the end of his father’s bed, the construction of metal and plastic between them a welcome barrier. He forces himself not to stick his hands in his pockets. 

Then he forces himself to open his mouth. “I’m sorry I yelled.”

“Son, I-“

“No,” Alli cuts over the former Sheriff immediately. “He’s talking now. You’ll get your turn.”

The man blinks at her, then puts down his pudding, finally, and folds his hands in his lap. He nods for Stiles to go ahead.

“I’m sorry I yelled,” Stiles repeats, “but I get mad when I get scared, you know that. And I’ve been scared of losing you for so long that it’s kind of automatic. The things I said, though, are kinda….” 

He licks his lips. Is it getting really hot in here all of a sudden? Did the AC fail?

He looks to Alli, who is wringing her hands a little, watching his father. Looks at Peter, half behind him, but still there. Still waiting. Stiles is going to marry that man. 

He focuses his gaze on the lumps of his father’s feet under the pastel green hospital blanket.

“You never put me first. It was always mom, or the drinking, or the job. And that’s okay. I’m over it. Mostly.” He blurts it quickly, so he can’t be interrupted, is peripherally aware of Alli raising her hand to stop an interruption. “Mom was sick and your job was so important and you needed the booze to function. I know that. I got over it. I did my own thing and I found people who love me and I’m fine. But that doesn’t change the fact that I grew up knowing that I wasn’t your priority. That I wasn’t your first thought. And that hurt. And when I let it, like yesterday, it still hurts. That’s not gonna change.”

It’s out now, the worst of it, and the weight on his chest loosens just for having said it. The rest comes easier. “I like how we are now, that you come visit, that we talk. I like it a lot, but it’s not a do-over. We’re not fixing what’s broken, we’re just ignoring it. That’s okay, because I don’t think we can fix it. What are you gonna do, right? Build a time machine?”

He snorts at his own joke, aware that he’s talking too fast, kind of losing control over what comes out of his mouth, but relief keeps pushing him forward. Relief and, perhaps, a tiny bit of vindication, of schadenfreude at seeing his father shrink into himself, of seeing him _hurt_ , like Stiles has, for so long. It’s a cruel thing to feel and he’ll shove it deep down and be properly ashamed in a moment, but here, now? It feels _good_. 

So he lets it.

“Right? So I’m okay. And this, us, we’re okay. But I needed to say it because as yesterday shows, there’s some lingering issues there and you need to know, because I always said I understood. Of course you had to go to work. You were the Sheriff. And of course you had to look after mom, because she was sick, and it was okay, and I knew you me loved anyway, but it wasn’t, Dad. It wasn’t okay. I was a kid and I was alone and I needed you and you weren’t there and that hurt. It still hurts and no matter where we are now, and what we do, it’s always going to hurt. Because I deserved to come first. _Kids_ deserve to come first and I never did.”

He spins on his heel as soon as the last word it out, the whole mess of it spilled out of him, and buries his face in Peter’s chest, inhales him, feels arms circle him. Steady, steady, steady. 

The tinge of vindictive glee is already gone. It’s just an ache again, now.

Alli is murmuring something behind him, quietly, urgently. He doesn’t care. He said it. He actually said it out loud. He told his dad – 

“Son. Stiles.” There is a pause. “Mieczyslaw.” 

Stiles’ breath catches in his throat. 

He turns. 

His father’s crying and Stiles has to fight down the instinctive slam of guilt, the urge to take it all back. Self love first, Isaac would say. Don’t take it on, it’s not yours. 

“God, I…,” he pauses, lost for words, wipes a hand over his face, shakes his head, blurts abruptly, “I became a cop because of you.”

“You were a cop before I was born,” Stiles rebuts instantly. He’s heard so many excuses. _Andrews has family, he can’t work Christmas, your mom is sick, she needs help, I only had two drinks, you’re not my mother, Stiles._

Alli, in her impartiality, actually shushes him. 

“By three months,” John points out. “After I got out of the army and your mother and I started trying for a kid, I decided I wanted to be a cop to make the world safer for our child. To make it a better place. For you.” He pauses, licks his lips and wipes at his eyes. He looks terribly old under his perpetual tan. “I didn’t walk into that gas station because I didn’t think of you. I walked in there because I could think of nothing else. That kid was seventeen, eighteen. You worked a crap job like that at that age and the idea of not helping him when I could? He’s only a handful of years older than Laura and how… Stiles, how could I look either you or the kids in the eye ever again if I didn’t try to save that boy?”

Stiles’ mouth is already open for a cutting reply, when Peter puts a hand on his waist, stills him. _Let him talk_. 

“I always thought… I thought that was enough. I honestly thought you knew, but I see now that, ah shit, you were a kid. What I was doing was probably too abstract a concept for you. That I was trying to -“

At that point, Stiles _has_ to. “I wanted someone to tuck me in at night, Dad. I didn’t need goddamn Batman. I just needed a _dad_.”

“I made a mistake,” John admits, and it looks like the thought alone is gutting him, like it’s hurting him too deeply to stand and Stiles takes no pleasure from it. He thought he might, did, for a moment, but now he looks at his father, at the lines of his face, the bags under his eyes, the white bandage peeking out under his t-shirt, the gnarled, hard-worked hands, and all he feels is exhaustion. 

He’s tired. He wants to go home. 

“I’m so, so sorry. Can I… can we… can I fix it?”

Stiles shakes his head. “I don’t think so. Time machine, dad. But,” he bites his lip ring, tugs hard until it stings. Leans into Peter and imagines he can feel the touch on leather membrane and hollow bones. “I think we can make room for it. Build around it.”

Like a crater. 

Grief isn’t only for dead things. 

“We’re not here to accuse you, John,” Peter finally pipes up and the ‘we’ makes Stiles’ heart beat just a fraction faster. “Or to hurt you. We’re here because Stiles needed to say these things, for his own sake. He needed to let them out. Admit them. Like he said, he’s okay. But old hurts have a way of festering. I’m sure you know. He loves you. Our children love you and we would never want to damage that. And we all know you love him, too.”

“Just not enough,” John whispers. He sounds very old, all of a sudden. 

Stiles doesn’t deny it. It’s a truth that’s been hurting him all his life and maybe, maybe it’s time for his dad to carry the hurt for a little while. Just a bit. 

Stiles doesn’t want what they have now to change. He didn’t come here to ruin the equilibrium they built since Talia’s funeral. But, he thinks, it’s time for them to see each other as they really are. Scars and all. 

They’ll survive it. He’s sure of that. 

+

Peter goes to call Melissa and give her their apologies. They’ll have to catch up some other time. Stiles and Peter are going straight home. 

Stiles hugs his dad while Alli watches them, lips pursed tight, shoulders relaxed. It’s over. 

His dad cries. Stiles cries, too, but they hug and they squeeze. Avoid each other’s gazes. Promise to give each other a bit of space, to let it settle. Stiles reassures his dad that he doesn’t want grand gestures of apology or recompense. 

“I just needed to say it and you listened. That’s all I wanted.”

All he ever wanted. For his father to look and see him. To see, even if only once, the scars he left on his only son. 

He knows it’s not really going to be that easy. In fact, it’s probably going to be fuck awkward for a while. But he can’t regret it. John won’t be able to drive for weeks, yet, which gives them time. 

To adjust. 

They set a date to skype with the kids on Saturday, so they can see Grandpa is fine. They hug again. 

Stiles leaves. 

Alli follows him out, pulls him in for a hard hug almost immediately. “I’m so proud of you.”

“For breaking my dad’s heart?” Stiles drawls, trying for sardonic. He almost manages. 

“For admitting you have one of your own.”

Which… gives Stiles a spark of an idea. His hand goes to his sternum, pushing down. He grins at his best friend. “Think we’ll be okay?”

She considers it for a moment, honestly. “Yes. I do. Like you said, you can make room for it and still keep the thing you have going now.”

“Good. You don’t mind us bugging out on lunch?”

“Nah. Get home to your kids. Tell them you love them. I’ll be home tonight.”

He hugs her again and goes to find Peter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At some point I might write the conversation between Allison and John that you know happened after Stiles and Peter left. But not in this story.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it, folks. Apart from an epilogue, this story's done. I'll save the sappy commentary for that, and just leave you with a huge thank you for all your comments, approval and ideas. Thank you!
> 
> I hope you like.

\+ 

Jennifer is not nervous. 

That’s not just her trying to not sound nervous. She’s actually not nervous. 

She’s kind of… the opposite of nervous? Whatever that may be. Calm? Reassured? Secure?

After the initial half hour of dancing around each other on eggshells yesterday, the Hale children accepted her with the aplomb of kids used to being around a lot of people. Derek spent half the evening explaining crochet to her. He was surprisingly verbose about it, too. Until then, she thought of him as the quiet middle child. Apparently, you just need to hit the right button and he turns into a little blabberbox.

Laura and Cora colored, making appropriately impressed noises over the selection of coloring books Jennifer bought for Cora. 

Lydia, visibly lagging from what Jennifer suspects was a mighty hangover, mostly just sat next to them, supervising quietly. 

It was nice and, for the first time in a very long while, Jennifer felt useful. Needed. Oh, she has no doubt that they would have been just fine without her there, but the distraction she provided was welcomed. It was appreciated. It felt good. 

Which is why she didn’t back down until she wrangled permission to take Laura and Derek to school. It’s ridiculous, really. It’s the exact same route. Driving separately makes little sense to her and Lydia can obviously use the break. 

So that’s what she’s doing right now. Picking up Derek and Laura for school, so Lydia can take Cora straight to daycare and then go home and sleep. Unpack. Get into some fresh clothing. She did come straight from a conference, after all. 

The Hales’ spare car seats are already installed in her car, Derek and Laura both agreed that they’d be fine with her, and Peter gave written permission via text. Jennifer is doing this. Helping. Doing for others what no-one did for her, just easing the burden a little. The task takes her literally nothing and spares Lydia a detour and Stiles and Peter a worry.

Just as she starts heading over with a few minutes to spare, a dark sedan pulls into the neighboring driveway and Amy, she of the gorgeous long hair, emerges, dressed to the nines in pencil skirt, ruffled blouse, blazer and nude pumps. She looks stunning. 

As she catches sight of Jennifer, she stops and waves, a beaming smile crossing her face. It turns her from stunning to breathtaking.

“Hey,” she greets, cheerfully. “Out of sugar?”

Jennifer chuckles. “No. I got Lydia to agree to let me take the kids to school since it’s on my way anyway. You?”

She assumes Amy knows about what’s going on, mainly because these people seem to exist with their phones attached to them and their group text constantly chiming. 

She’s not wrong. “I’m just checking in and picking up a few files from Peter’s office. He took them home to look through, but I need them to prepare the case.”

“Right, you work together. It must be great, working with close friends.”

Amy shrugs as they both turn toward the Hale front door and start walking. “I don’t know. I’ve worked with Peter for years, but I only got induced into this little madhouse a few months ago. But so far it’s been amazing.” She makes a wavy hand motion. “I’m kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop, but I’m starting to think with this crowd, the first shoe might actually be all there is to it, you know?”

“They’re genuine,” Jennifer summarizes. She’s surprised to know that Amy’s new to the group. She seems to fit in so seamlessly. 

Amy nods. “Right? And also insane, but it’s such fun! I mean, these people just have ‘friendship goals’ written all over them, it’s nuts. Outside of sit coms, families like this don’t actually exist, but,” she flaps her hand again. 

Wisely, Jennifer nods. She knows exactly what the other woman means. Suddenly, within reach of the doorbell, Amy puts a hand on her arm, stopping her. “So, listen. Speaking of insanely close people with no sense of propriety.”

They were?

“Yes?”

“I… might have heard about… why you moved out here?”

Oh. Oh. Jennifer swallows, then shakes it off, forcefully. It’s not like it’s a secret, she told Isaac, told Stiles and Allison. But… she doesn’t want to be branded for it. It surprises her, the sudden realization that she doesn’t want ‘widow’ to be all she is anymore. 

It can’t have been a sudden development, but it startles her now. 

“Her name was Julia,” she says, instead of any of that, because Julia should always be a name and a person, rather than an ominous ghost. 

“Julia. Okay. I…,” she half expects Amy to deliver the usual condolences, to tell her how sorry she is, but she bites her lips briefly, then shakes her head. “I like you,” she offers, abruptly, almost a bit rudely. “You’re hot, you’re smart, you’re apparently nice enough to help out your neighbors in a pinch even when you don’t have to, and did I mention hot, and I’d like to date you.”

Before Jennifer can respond, she goes on, “But I get that that’s probably not where you’re at right now, so I’m not going to ask you on a date. I just… I play with open cards. No sense in making secrets out of shit like that, right?”

She doesn’t seem to need an answer, because she barrels on, “So what I am doing is offering you my friendship. I’d like to be your friend and get to know you. No pressure, no assumptions, just someone to talk to and maybe go out with sometimes?”

“Platonic dating?” Jennifer asks, half joking, a bit wry, but still oddly touched. And flattered. Amy is hot. And apparently she thinks Jennifer is, too. She missed that feeling. It’s nice. 

Her comment earns her an eye roll. “Friendship. Where, you know, if, at any point in time, you decided to jump my bones, I’d be totally cool with that.”

Jennifer doesn’t really have to think about it. “You know what, I think I would, too.”

They actually shake on it. 

+

Peter’s hand finds Stiles’ as soon as they hit the open road. 

“How are you?” he asks. 

Stiles shrugs. For once, he might actually be out of words. Novel experience. He’s been quiet since the hospital, but not the same loaded, dangerous quiet from the drive that brought them to Beacon Hills. 

“I didn’t want to hurt him,” he says, after a long moment of consideration, squeezing Peter’s hand. “That was never the goal. I didn’t… it wasn’t about revenge or vindication or anything. I just wanted him to… to see me. As I am.”

He seems to be struggling for the right words. “You wanted acknowledgement.” 

“Yes!” he snaps his free hand’s fingers in agreement. “Acknowledgement. That’s the word! I feel a little bad, guilty, about how I hurt him in the process, but there’s the little Isaac voice in the back of my mind telling me that he’s my father and taking on burdens for his son is literally his job. And then there’s the other voice saying he never has, so why make him do it now, and then there’s Isaac again saying that’s my guilt complex talking, or maybe my hero complex, and saving others is not what I’m here for. But he’s my dad. And I hurt him.”

“He hurt you first,” Peter points out, calmly.

“Not a competition. I feel bad because it seems disproportionate? Hurting him this badly for something that I’m mostly over and have been for a long time?”

Peter can’t quite help his derisive snort. “You forget, I’ve been with you since Scott and Kira broke the news. Don’t marginalize how upset you were yesterday just because it causes John discomfort.”

That’s what got the Stilinski men into this mess in the first place. 

Stiles hums. “I know it was the right thing to do. I’ve been reading Isaac’s textbooks since college and I brushed up on my psych stuff for the sake of the kids and I know I had to say it. To make it real, to have him acknowledge it. I just – “

“Wish you didn’t have to?”

“That,” he agrees, shuffling sideways to awkwardly rest his head on Peter’s shoulder for a moment before retreating to his own seat. 

“In a perfect world, blah, blah.” He pauses, chews on the damn ring again. Peter strokes his thumb along the piece of string around Stiles’ wrist, taps blindly on where it’s knotted right above his pulse point. Habit.

“Promise me you’ll never let me hurt the kids like that?”

Peter’s thumb freezes, presses in enough to make Stiles squirm. The idea, the mere concept of Stiles being as… as disinterested and self-involved as John was, is completely ridiculous. It collides with Stiles’ base programming. Badly. 

“You never would. You’re far too aware, too careful and kind to ever let that happen.”

And maybe that’s John’s doing, but Peter is never going to thank the man for it. 

Stiles opens his mouth to protest, but Peter cuts him off. “For your peace of mind, though, yes, I promise. If you ever experience a complete personality transplant and suddenly stop obsessively and aggressively caring about your loved ones, I’ll point it out to you. Before I hire an exorcist, even.”

That gets him a laugh. Mission accomplished. 

“So,” he asks, a few miles later, “how are we going to announce that we’re getting married without letting anyone know how badly I screwed up the proposal?”

He gets a swat on his thigh for that. “You didn’t screw up anything! It was beautiful! And I kind of want to just get my hands on that ring, tell the kids, and then lean back and see how long it takes everyone else to notice?”

“Considering that it’s Friday and they’ll all be congregating in a few hours, probably five minutes.”

Stiles beams at him. “You’re on.”

+

They hit up a supermarket as soon as they hit up town, because weekend grocery runs wait for no man, and Stiles ends up dropping Peter off at his firm, because Amy has problems with the case she’s preparing and she needs Peter for an hour or two. 

He tells her no right away, but Stiles won’t hear it. He’s a grown-ass man. He’ll be fine on his own and he refuses to let his drama invade their lives here. 

Peter is needed, so Peter will be there. 

He drives home alone, puts away the groceries and tidies up, changes the sheets on Alli’s bed because Lydia slept in it, texts everyone to know they’re back and they’ll talk later and asks Peter if he’s picking up the kids. (Amy offered to bring her boss home, so she might as well pick up his kids on the way.)

He gets confirmation too fast for Peter to not still be keeping his phone in hand at all times, sighs. 

He calls the store to make sure it’s still standing and gets Maggie on the phone. She tells him she came in for her weekend shift a day early and not to worry, they’ve got it. Mason chimes agreement from somewhere close by. 

Finally, Stiles considers calling Bobby for a real estate update, but he doesn’t want to adult anymore. So, out of things to do, he grabs the nearest project basket and retreats to the bedroom, where he finds he picked the one with the heather grey lace yarn. He’s making a cardigan out of it, a huge, fluffy, cozy one. With red sleeves, because he likes the shade of red this yarn comes in. 

But it’s fiddly work because, despite the easy pattern, he has to use a tiny hook to make a pretty large piece of fabric and it takes time. He’s been working on and off on this for three months because he doesn’t like lugging around larger projects and in the evenings, something chunkier is easier to work, what with the kids all over him and elbows everywhere. 

He has time now, and space, and nothing but his thoughts to occupy him. He finds his place, unspools a bit of yarn because he hates working with tension in the yarn and starts working. 

Yarnover, loop, through and through, double crochet. Yarnover, loop, through and through. Two hundred and fifty to a row. It’s repetitive and boring and soothing and eventually, his head turns off with a whir of machinery and then it’s just the rhythm of it, his fingers moving almost too fast for the eye to follow. 

His shifts position when his shoulders start aching, stretches his wrists occasionally, and picks it right back up. The best kind of therapy he’s ever found. He doesn’t think, because thinking sucks and he doesn’t want to. 

He hears, peripherally, as Allison returns, letting herself into her room quietly. Sometime later there’s a louder commotion downstairs and then Derek finds him. 

He stands by the side of the bed for a while, watching, not saying anything. He’s wearing his Batman hoodie (third incarnation) and turtling into it, like he does on bad days. Stiles smiles at him and reels him in for a hug and if Derek snuffles a little into his shoulder, well. 

They don’t talk because Derek still doesn’t, sometimes, and Stiles’ head is nicely quiet, for once. He ends up picking his work back up while Derek curls up at his feet, head on Stiles’ shins, watching him, yarnover, loop, through and through, two hundred and fifty to a row. 

Laura comes next, peeking through the half open door like an intruder. She watches for a few moments, smiles and waves, then disappears, returning with her latest cross stich project and settling in on Stiles’ left after a long, hard hug and a few whispered words. 

Peter and Cora come together and Stiles gets a happy lapful of one and a kiss on his forehead from the other. As he snuggles Cora while simultaneously trying to keep her away from his yarn, Peter settles on Stiles’ free side and leans in. He pulls out Cora’s favorite toys from a pocket, a stuffed wolf and a few crochet balls and Derek wordlessly takes them, starts playing with his baby sister, practicing her words and colors. 

Which leaves Stiles with his side pressed up against Peter’s until something small and hard suddenly finds its way into his hand. 

He looks down. 

The inside of the ring is silver colored, though the sheen makes Stiles suspect platinum, rather than actual silver. The outside is made of smooth, dark, rich wood with a lovely grain. It feels warm in his hand. There are no stones and no embellishments, nothing to make it look particularly flashy or important. Stiles suspects that the metal part won’t even be visible when he wears it. 

It’s perfect. Handcrafted, has to be, and simple and thoughtful. 

He loves it. He would have loved a Fruit Loop in resin, really, just for what it symbolizes, but he actually, genuinely _loves_ this ring and all the care and time Peter obviously put into finding it. 

He beams at his partner – fiancé – like an idiot and passes the ring promptly back, wiggling the appropriate finger. Peter rolls his eyes, but grins, too, and obliges Stiles.

The ring fits perfectly, snug enough to not catch on anything and loose enough not to be uncomfortable, and Stiles is sure Peter intended that, too.

He doesn’t notice how quiet the kids have gone until, as soon as the ring is in place, they start cheering. Well, Laura and Derek do. Cora just yells because everyone else is yelling.

They get buried in a pile of excited, wiggling children a moment later and it’s all Stiles can do to make sure no-one gets a hook stuck in them while they pile on. He laughs, and it’s a loud sound after hours of quiet, laughs and hugs them all and loves them so, so much.

“Does that mean you’re gonna be our parent for real, now?” Derek asks, shyly, from where he’s squished his face between Stiles’ abdomen and Peter’s hip.

And Stiles… Stiles lets himself have this. “I’ve always been your parent for real, Derek. We’re just making it official now. Is… is that okay with you guys?”

More cheers. 

+

 


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are. It's over. 
> 
> I can't thank you all enough for your encouragement, praise, help and craftiness. It's been wonderful and endlessly entertaining and I really don't have words how much it means to me that you're all sitcking it out with me in this weird little world I've created. I adore you, really. 
> 
> So here, have an epilogue.

+

“Okay,” Isaac drawls, leaning against the counter next to Stiles. “I did not expect that?”

Stiles, busy beaming at every passing customer in his new, awesome, amazing, brilliant store, jerks in surprise. “What?”

“That.” Helpfully, Isaac points toward where Bobby Finstock and Helen are taking in the displays, drinks in hand, Paige happily bouncing between them, her basket already half-filled with yarn. 

As they watch, Bobby says something that earns him a beaming smile from the girl and a kiss on the cheek from a blushing Helen.

Stiles fist pumps. “Awesome. I knew they were gonna hit it off. Bobby’s way too gone on both of them for it not to work out.”

Isaac’s eyebrows hit his hairline. “You did that? I thought you decided never to play yenta again after the Danny Dating Debacle of 2014?”

With a shrug, Stiles explains, “Bobby was desperate enough to make it a stipulation to finding this place for me.”

“And an awesome place it is!” Erica declares, more or less jumping both of them from the back. She smacks Isaac in the face with the flyers for her tattoo parlor that she’s been handing out to anyone admiring the amazon mural. Including kids, much to their parents’ delight. “I’ve made three appointments for the next week, already.”

Dryly, Stiles pats her arm. “I’m so glad my business is helping yours along.”

Laughing, she presses a kiss to his temple and then jogs off to greet Boyd, who just entered with little Ally. Since Boyd really did build Stiles the most awesome catwalk over the new seating area, Stiles salutes Isaac, grabs a glass of champagne off of Liam, who is playing waiter, and carries it over. 

“Hey, man, you made it. Take this, the catwalk looks better than I ever expected it to!” Boyd accepts the drink, toasts Stiles silently and wanders off to look around without a word. 

Suspiciously, Stiles turns to Erica. “Did you make him flyers, too? Is he going to be advertising carpentry now?”

She snorts, finishes taking off Ally’s hat and sunglasses and sends her off toward where Derek is presiding over the toddler play area like a grumpy king over his miniature subjects. “Nah. I gave him a yarn budget. My man is gonna treat himself today.”

Laughing, Stiles follows Boyd, passing Laura on the way, a plastic box under her arm, collecting empties like a pro. She’s getting a twenty buck gift voucher and a ride to the movies out of it. “I foresee a career in the service industry for you, my lady.”

She giggle-snorts and shakes her head. “I’m going to be a lawyer. I’ll eat the service industry for breakfast!” She snaps her teeth for emphasis and then bounces off to collect the glasses left behind by Stiles’ Monday Stitch’n’Bitch. 

Five steps later, something very familiar careens into the back of his knees. He has to use the postcard display to stop himself from landing on his face, bends down and hauls Cora around blindly. “My darling missile, what have I told you about using guerilla tactics on me, huh?”

With a spitty smile, she smacks her hands onto his cheeks. “Papa,” she demands, “where Peta Da?”

Stiles, being a manly man, doesn’t start grossly sobbing at the fact that his baby is calling him Papa now. He doesn’t. He did that when he found out that Laura and Derek have been coaching her for months, hugged them all until they started squirming and declared his undying love. He’s over it now. Totally. 

But the little extra squeeze he gives his Rocket Girl is still well deserved. 

“Your dad was last seen chatting with Amy and Jenny by the paper crafts. Let’s go look for him, okay?”

“Yes! Look for Peta Da!”

“Hey, whole sentence. Well done, you!”

“I do good!”

“You do awesomely!”

They high-five and Stiles quickly catches Derek’s gaze to make sure the kid knows where his #1 charge has disappeared to. Derek nods and goes back to patiently helping a three-year-old sort a bunch of crochet balls by color. Born babysitter, that one. Stiles and Peter have a bet going on whether he’ll go in for art or child care of some sort.

(Lydia put fifty on art teacher, the crafty, crafty woman. Pun not intended.)

Peter is still where Stiles left him, and judging by his gesturing, he’s recounting the Perfectly Botched Proposal. Again. Neither of them will ever live that mess down, but at least Peter has resigned himself to the indignity of it. And hey, Jenny and Amy are both giggling like teenagers, so that has to count for something. 

“Ladies, sorry to interrupt, but Peter’s in high demand.”

Promptly, Cora reaches out with both arms, throwing her entire weight forward. Peter anticipates the move and takes her from Stiles before she’s even fully horizontal. Stiles uses the trade-off to quickly check the weight of Cora’s diaper (potty-training is a nightmare) and pull her shorts back into place from where they’re eternally slipping down her legs. 

Jennifer, hands raised in an aborted attempt to catch the flying toddler, blinks twice. Amy hooks her arm into Jenny’s and pulls it down. “I know, right? The first time I saw them do that, I had the same reaction. That’s some parenting magic bullshit they’ve got going.”

Stiles hasn’t even started glaring when Cora already claps and declares, “Magic bullshit!”

Amy groans. “How does she always zero in on the one bad word I say? How?”

“Practice,” Stiles explains, with heavy side-eye toward his fiancé. Saying that word still gives him a thrill. Fiancé. 

“You’re almost as bad as me,” Peter counters.

“Almost being the keyword. You guys having fun?”

Jennifer nods toward a basket at her feet, with a few postcards, some paper stuff and a book on knitting in it. Stile smells a convert. Amy just nods. “Yep. So, did your dad make it? I still haven’t met the man.”

Stiles bites back on a grimace. To say things have been awkward the past few months would be an understatement. But they’ve also been… lighter. They had a few good talks, and, well. Not feeling like he’s carrying around some deep, dark secret has helped him a lot. Still. The awkward will persist for a while, yet. 

It’s Peter who answered, “Yeah. He and Scott’s mother got here a while ago. I think Kira is showing them around.”

“Roger that!” Amy announces, and drags off Jennifer, who barely has time to grab her basket and wave a little. She goes, though, willingly and with a smile and Stiles feels warm fuzzies because Amy is assimilating wonderfully and Jennifer is looking good, too. 

(He and Isaac already had two more CoA shirts made. Shut up.)

“So,” Peter drawls, passing Cora one of the crochet dolls scattered all over, as is _Yarnsome_ tradition, letting her mangle it, “how do you feel?”

Stiles beams. “I’m standing in my own, newly-bought, can-do-with-it-what-I-want store, with all my friends and family and most of my regulars, having an amazing party. I’m pretty good. You?”

“Too many people,” Peter retorts, solemnly. A seconds later he cracks a smile. “You’re happy, so I’m happy. Just try to rescue me when the single moms descend?” He points toward a gaggle of appreciative soccer moms in the far corner. They stare and cackle a lot.

“They’re Helen’s friends. They can’t be that bad.”

Peter just stares at him, dead-eyed. Stiles laughs. “Okay, okay, I’ll keep an eye out, you poor baby!”

“I not a baby!”

“No, Rocket Girl, you’re not. You’re a weapon!” 

They high-five again and Stiles returns to his rounds. 

He makes it all of seven steps (not falling over people anymore was kind of the whole _point_ of this new place), before big Alli waylays him. 

“Hi!” she beams. 

“Hi.”

“So, looks like a hit!” She’s grinning broadly enough to make Stiles’ cheeks hurt in sympathy and there’s a manic sort of gleam in her eyes and it’s not just the store, he can tell. She’s been with her dad for the past week and rumor has it she has been binge working on something. Stiles is curious.

“Okay, what’s going on?”

In response, she thrusts a stack of papers at him hard enough to make his chest ache on impact. He grabs it reflexively and she actually _claps her hands_ in joy as she starts babbling, “So I finally figured out an ending and I went to meet Meredith earlier and I told her she could either publish the book with the ending it has now, or I’d find someone else, even at the risk of never getting published at all, because this ending is right and it’s true and she grumped a lot but I put on my serious face and she took it! She took my book! She’s publishing it! And I want you to be the first to read the new ending because, well, just… read it, okay?”

She stops. Smiles. Dimples all over the place. Stiles pulls the book – which he now realizes this is – higher on his chest as a shield. “What, now?”

“It’s only the epilogue? It’s, like, two pages? Please?”

She keeps dimpling at him. 

Grrrrraaaargh! “Fiend! If anyone comes looking for me, you know, _the main person at this event_ , tell them I’m in the back, reading a book.” In direct contradiction to his grumpy announcement, he presses a kiss to her cheek as he blows past, gives Mason at the register a thumbs up and then hurries his ass into the breakroom because he’s super extra curious now. 

A lot. 

He finds a chair, plops down (god, his feet) and flips open the giant print-out, intent on finding a table of contents. 

Instead he finds a dedication.

_For Stiles, who believed in me first  
And my Dad, who believed in me always_

Okay. That’s kind of a tear-jerker. All he did was be honest and tell her that she could do anything she wanted, which is true. 

_Epilogue_ is on page 298. He closes the book, flips it over and opens it again two pages from the back.

It’s a sort of and-then-montage, set at a party, which is situationally hilarious and a cute way to wrap up all the characters, last seen on the battlefield as the ashes settled. And then – 

_With a sigh, Kate dropped down next to her best friend, putting her head on his shoulder._

_“Careful,” he joked, grabbing her hand and squeezing it, “your werewolf boyfriend is just across the room. I don’t want to get skewered.”_

_She snorted, smacking his thigh with their joint hands. “Idiot. Adam knows I love him. That doesn’t mean I don’t get to have my BFF snuggles.”_

_They sat in silence for a few minutes, watching their friends – their pack – move around them, laughing, joking, talking. Happily. At peace. Even some of the parents had shown up, at least the ones in the know, and were presiding over their children with fond looks. It was good._

_“Does it feel weird to you? Being here, I mean? After everything we did. So many people got hurt. The fire, and your family being evil, all the fighting and the hate and,” he paused, looking down at his hands, “all the things we did?”_

_His magic had saved the day, at the end, protecting the wolves from Kate’s aunt. God, her aunt. She’d loved that woman, right up until she’d hated her and now she was dead. A whole lot of people were dead and they were sitting here like – She shakes off the thought. Tonight, she doesn’t want to be sad._

_“No. I mean, yeah, we fought and we hurt and people died, but we survived that, you know?” she shrugged, almost dislodging her head. “I know they say you don’t get to go home again, but I don’t think they’re right. Not entirely. Home used to be my parents and my aunt and my old friends and I’ll never be able to go back there.”_

_She paused. “But I’m not who I used to be back then, either. This is home now. You and Adam and the pack and I bled and fought and sweat for this and I get to have this. We all get to have this. Just because bad things happened to you that doesn’t mean they have to keep happening and we deserve good things. Everyone does.”_

_The shoulder under her head moved and an arm wrapped around her, pulling her close. Her and him, best friends, the way they’d always been. A lot had changed, but that never would._

_They were home._

Softly, Stiles closes the last page. Then he flips the book back over. The title _Wolf Moon_ stares back at him. He blinks rapidly at the sudden invasion of dust and pollen into the breakroom. Which is all this is. Honest. 

Shit, he’s crying.

Then he stands, raps his knuckles on the book, Alli’s book, just once and heads back to the front, wiping his eyes as he does. He finds her talking to Laura about something with a very serious expression, but he doesn’t give a fuck right now, just grabs her by the shoulder, hauls her around and hugs her tight enough to make her literally squeak. 

After a moment, she’s hugging back just as tightly. “I love you,” he tells her, head buried in her neck, tasting hair. “Fuck, but I love you.”

“Yeah,” she returns, a damp laugh, “I kind of love you too, idiot.”

Beside them, Laura seems to decide she’s missing out, because she loudly declares, “Group hug,” and launches herself at them. 

Erica, always game, joins next and pretty soon, it’s a Cult of Awesome Hug Fest in the middle of the store with the regular customers watching with amused and kind of weirded-out expressions. 

From somewhere behind Stiles, Peter asks, dryly, “Why are we hugging, exactly?”

“Because Alli has finished her book and it is amazing and I love all of you misfits,” Stiles declares, because he can, earning himself a round of laughter and renewed squeezing. 

He and Allison both pull back a little to look each other in the eye, smiling. 

“Home,” they agree, simultaneously. 

Home.

+

+

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave a comment on your way out. 
> 
> (And keep an eye out for more side stories.)

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me, various related rants and craftiness on tumblr: wordsformurder. 
> 
> This series has it's own tag, please use it, if you're re(blogging): Hook yarn sinker


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